Gummi Bears and the Time Stone
by jgames
Summary: Igthorn has returned and brought himself an army far beyond the knowledge of the Gummi Bears. Sunni Gummi escapes the massacre and winds up in a dark future. Now she must master the Time Stone's powers and change her future. Warning: Dark storyline. R&R.
1. Chapter 1: Happy birthday Sunni

**Gummi Bears**

**And the Time Stone**

_Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or scenery involved with Disney's Gummi Bears. This story is purely fictional and meant for entertainment purposes only._

Chapter 1: Happy birthday Sunni

A storm hangs in the air on the night of my eighteenth birthday. The rain beat down against my yellow fur and drenched my green tunic. The lightning crashed down so close I could almost feel it against me. I ran and ran away as far as I could, clutching a round stone with strange foreign markings on it, keeping it close to my chest. I stopped next to a large fir tree to catch my breath, and stared at my reflection in a pool of water trapped in between two of the tree's roots. My name is Sunni Gummi and I am a small, yellow, female bear. But not just any bear, I am a Gummi Bear, and now the last of my kind. My tears began to add to the puddle of rain water at the thought of everything that had just transpired this evening.

We lived in a forest near the gates of the Kingdom of Dunwyn, where two dear friends of ours lived. One was a boy named Cavin and the other was a princess named Calla. That was until our greatest adversary, Duke Igthorn, found an item called a "time stone" and used it to invade both Gummi Glen, and Dunwyn Castle. The way the stone works is that it can take you to any point in time simply by concentrating while placing your hand over the stone. At least that's what Zummi Gummi told me before the brutal attack on our home. Somehow Duke Igthorn used the time stone to place himself right in the middle of Gummi Glen along with around twenty or thirty of some strange new metallic creatures, and not even Gruffi's traps had any effect on them. It only took a few moments before Gummi Glen was completely reduced to ashes and everyone I ever held dear was slaughtered right in front of my eyes.

I have no idea how I was able to escape with the stone in my hands, the whole attack seemed like a blur to me, and I hardly remember a thing up to when I started resting against the tree. However, images of all of the gummi's in Gummi Glen ran through my mind. The sights I saw of Cubbi curled up on the floor of the hallway, bleeding from his stomach and wincing in pain, Grammi and Gruffi both lying on the floor of the kitchen, bathing in a pool of their mingling blood, lifeless and cold. Zummi finishing his explanation about the time stone and getting stabbed through the back, his life blood splattering all over me, staining my tunic and face. And all of the others being relentlessly murdered as I panicked and made my way through Gummi Glen, swiped the stone from Igthorn's hands and promptly escaped from the bloodbath.

The moment these images stopped running through my mind, my knees buckled and I dropped to the ground in a lonely, horrified sob, clutching the stone close to my chest and crying out as loud as I could until my lungs were completely empty of air. The tears just couldn't stop flowing and I never even made an effort to stop them. All was lost to me and I just couldn't stop. I inhaled deeply and let out another cry trying to allow the sorrow to escape with my voice. My eyes were shut as tight as I could get them to keep the images from arising again, however, the tears continued to escape and rolled off of my face with the rain drops. Taking in another breath of air in four or five small bursts as my throat was beginning to close and open from my sorrow, I screamed out as loud as I could this time letting out all of my emotions with it.

That's when I heard the sound of metal clanking against itself and the awful sound of metal sliding against other pieces of metal. Those metal creatures that Igthorn had brought with him to massacre us were tracking me and they didn't even seem to get tired or anything. I had no more time to feel sorry for myself. I needed to get to the castle as fast as I could. I took off like a shot in the direction of the castle hoping to the heavens that my friends were alright.

I reached the castle gates only to find that they had been forced down from the inside. Duke Igthorn also somehow brought an army of his ugly, large, hulking ogres into the castle and started a war from within its walls. There was little time for subtlety. I ran across the torn down drawbridge as fast as I could, those indestructible metal creatures still behind me and entered the castle walls. I weaved my way through the carnage and violence, up the castle steps and through the front door only to be greeted with the lifeless body of our first human friend, Cavin. From his injuries, it looked like he had been smashed against a wall until he simply stopped moving. It was a sad thing to see as he had just made the honor of becoming a knight last month.

Worried about Calla, I made an effort to at least make sure my friend's eyes were closed before continuing on to find the princess. Ignoring my exhaustion, I ran up the winding staircases as fast as I could, hoping and praying that she was alive and safe, my last friend and comrade. Don't get me wrong, she was definitely capable of holding her own with a weapon, but I had lost so much in the past three hours, I couldn't risk losing any more.

The blood of both knights and ogres were splattered and pooled throughout the castle's interior, the tapestries stained red, and lifeless bodies soaked in it. Lightning struck every so often as I climbed the stairs, aiding the torches in lighting up the entire castle for quick seconds. Making my way to Calla's room I stopped at the door for a second to catch my breath, and then I pushed the door open. On the other side of the door was a large open room. It was all familiar to me, due to the fact that I had been in this room hundreds of times before. The bright purple drapes hung along the sides of a window directly across from the door. To the leftmost wall stood a large wide bed with lavender dressings, pillows and all manner of stuffed dolls meticulously crafted to look similar each of us gummi bears. To the left of the bed and against the stone wall stood two dresser drawers filled with gorgeous outfits designed for a princess. To the right of the bed stood a wooden vanity, carved with an intricate floral design along the edges of the mirror.

The entire room seemed completely empty until a small groan came from the other side of the bed from which I couldn't see from the door. A girl's hand rose up and placed itself against the bed's mattress to help pull up the rest of the girl's body. In a few moments a head of long braided blond hair peeked out and rested itself against the bed. "Calla!" I called to her. I sprinted once again to go and see my friend. To my horror, when I was able to see Calla's whole body, I saw her gorgeous light blue dress stained crimson with blood and some of it even spurted out as she moved. In her left hand she held a long, thin rapier sword that had snapped around a foot from the hilt. She winced in pain as she picked herself up into an upright sitting position, as I knelt down to aid her, placing the round stone to my left side. "Hi, Sunni. Sorry I couldn't make it to your birthday today." She weakly said to me with her eyes barely able to stay open. They were beginning to glaze over with every word that she spoke. "I wanted to...finish making your present but...I never got around to..." Unable to stand loosing another friend, I shushed her to get her to save her strength. "You need to stop talking Calla. You need to save your strength." That was when she released her grip on the handle of the broken rapier, took my right paw and brought it up to her face. "Don't...worry about me, Sunni...just run away..." At this point, blood began leaking from her mouth and down her chin. "You need to..." She never got to finish her sentence. Her eyes turned gray then she slid down from her sitting position onto her right side and never moved again.

Torn with grief and pain, I leaned back as far as my balance would allow, tilted my head back to look at the room's ceiling, closed my eyes tightly and once again, and cried out loud with loss. I barely noticed my left paw resting on the round stone when the engravings on the stone lit up with a brilliant blue light that began traveling along my arm and eventually the rest of my body. If that wasn't bad enough, those strange metal creatures had followed me into Calla's room and were readying themselves into attacking me. The metal creatures resembled a spider with only four legs. The legs of the creature acted like sword blades and were able to pierce most material and even able to chip away at granite quite effectively. They were able to move swift and silent if you weren't listening for the faint metal sounds. In the front of the orb that was their bodies, there was a simple red glowing eye that moved around in all directions except for behind them. Each creature was perfectly uniform in shape, size, color, and even capability. Four of the creatures skittered along the walls of the room and others poured into the room along the floor. The leader jumped at me with its two razor sharp front legs spread wide open, poised to cut me down and have me join all of my friends in the afterlife. I closed my eyes tightly again, ready to accept the pain of the creature's strike. However, it wasn't meant to happen. The glow that had crept over my body completely enveloped me and I vanished into thin air...presumably.

When I finally opened my eyes when the sharp piercing twinge of pain and the brilliant white light never came, I found myself in a strange new world made from clay bricks and a different kind of stone that I had never seen before. The area was dark, cold and damp. Being soaked to the bone from the downpour was no help either. All around me I saw humans. They were unshaved and scruffy looking with torn bits of strange clothes hanging off of their backs. They were gathered around a fire inside some kind of metal barrel and simply staring at me. I don't blame them...I had just appeared out of nowhere. I slowly stood upright in my worn out leather shoes, my feet aching from all of the running I had just done and my legs feeling like well beaten cookie dough. Fatigue and exhaustion had finally set in and I simply fainted and collapsed to the ground.


	2. Chapter 2: The boy with the scar

Chapter 2: The boy with the scar

I awoke to the smell of fresh chicken soup. When my eyes finally opened, I was in a room that looked sort of like a room in Gummi Glen. The furniture was carved by hand and kind of rustic. The walls were made of wood, like a log cabin in the woods. I slowly made an effort to sit up, but my strength continued to fail me. Even if I was in the lair of a horrible monster, I could do little to stop it from doing anything. Then, from around the right side corner, a human boy about the age of eighteen emerged carrying with him a hot bowl of soup. The boy was slightly gruff looking, but underneath that hard exterior the look of genuine kindness circled in his baby blue eyes. His shirt was white with strange patterns on it that resembled a kind of paint splatter along with some nearly hidden images. His trousers were blue and were made out of a kind of coarse material that was new to me. It was also hard to see his shoes as they were partially hidden by the long legs of his trousers. In all, he stood about five feet tall, give or take two inches. His dusty blond hair had grown long enough to cover his ears and fall just above his eye lids.

"So, you're finally awake." The boy said to me in his smooth, melodic voice. It was only when he approached me and sat down next to the rustic, hand carved bed he had tucked me into did I notice a long scar that traveled from centimeters below his right eye to an inch from the corner of his mouth. "My name is Eric. Eric Lohengrin. What's yours?" I opened my mouth to introduce myself but my voice cracked from the strain before my arrival. "Suh...Sunni." I tried clearing my throat, but that simply made it hurt more. "Sunni Gummi" I was finally able to get out. "Good, that's a start. This soup might make you feel better." He said as he set the bowl down, placed his right hand under my head and gently lifted me up to a sitting position. He then scooted me back so I was resting against the bed's headboard and holding onto the bowl, he dipped a metal spoon into it. After lifting the spoon and some soup out of the bowl, he placed the spoon into my mouth and tipped it upward to allow the broth to drain into my mouth. He then gently pulled the spoon out of my mouth and went to repeat the process. After a couple of spoonfuls of soup, my throat began feeling soothed enough for me to talk. "So, is this your place?" I asked softly, my voice still groggy. "Yah, it is. I prefer it out of the cities." He responded, as he fed me some more soup. The broth flowed smoothly down my throat, warming me up as it fell down and into my stomach. "Why are you helping me?" I asked him. "Because, you were sick, and you were traded to me for upgrade services." He responded. "Traded?" I asked extremely confused. "My profession." He informed me. "Build things for people in return for tradable items. Some dude off of the street thought you were dead and traded the responsibility of burring you in return for some upgrades to his car. You've probably traded more hands than you think." Suddenly I felt even sicker than before. "How did I become a piece of gold?" I blurted out in pure disgust. My head spinning from the mere thought of it. "Gummi Bear relics are worth thousands of gold pieces. How much do you think the desperate and poor would think an actual Gummi Bear would be worth, dead or alive?" Still shocked at his explanation I asked him, "And you? What am I worth to you?" He just fed me some more soup and answered, "Depends on how much you can help me around the shop."

Over the next three weeks, he started teaching me how to "turn wrench". Eventually he put together my own shop coat and I began helping him with his repairs and tune-ups. When customers were around he had me hide in fear that it might start something bad. And rightfully so. Eventually I was able to put together a rough estimate of one hundred thousand gold pieces for the value on my pelt alone. I was surprised at the fact that this day and age still used gold pieces. I forced myself to learn more in three weeks than I could in three months back in my own time. One day, I decided to take a break and climb on the roof to watch the stars. I stared deep into the black abyss, nearly dozing off until a loud siren could be heard off in the great distance. It was soon accompanied by the tall light beams of search lights and the glittering of lights being turned on almost all at once in a tall tower that stretched past the clouds, and came back down in a wide base about the size of a city. Eric dashed out of the shop frantically looking for me and calling my name. "Sunni? Sunni, where are you?" He called. "Up here." I answered. He quickly turned to look at where my voice came from and gave me a sign of relief by resting his left hand on his chest and exhaling silently.

"What's going on?" I asked. "Apparently someone broke into the castle and stole some Gummi Berry Juice." He answered me. "What do you mean stole some..." Suddenly it hit me. He said they stole "Gummi Berry Juice". "How can there be Gummi Berry Juice if the only ones who knew how to make it were..." "Gummi Bears?" Eric interrupted me, "Apparently, 'Lord Igthorn' found multiple versions of it long ago. Different combinations of berries made different juices that gave his ogre troops different abilities. Longevity, lightning speed, super strength, invulnerability, etc." Shocked at the turn of events, there was only one person that survived the onslaught that had even the slightest clue of the existence of Gummi Bears and the fact that Gummi Berry Juice was made with Gummi Berries. "'Lord Igthorn'?" I gasped. "The man who took over the world." Eric added to my shock. "They say, he discovered an item that allowed him to be in several places at the same time and even avoid injury in battles. Others say that he discovered a method of pure immortality." "No." I gasped. "However, I know exactly how he did it." Eric said. Now more confused than ever, I just had to know what he knew. "So, how has Igthorn lived from the medieval times till the twentieth century?" I asked. Eric never answered my question. Instead he simply turned back into the workshop and walked inside.

I made my way off of the roof to follow and confront him. "Eric, tell me what happened. How has Igthorn lived this long?" I called after him. I found Eric resting both his hands against his front desk. He was standing and looked like he was in pain or ashamed of something. "What?" I asked solemnly walking up to him to comfort him. "What is it?" "It was my ancestor." He told me with shame in his voice. I stopped advancing toward him and froze where I was, just staring at him still slightly confused. "What about your ancestor?" I asked him. "My ancestor was a traveling merchant that collected many secrets back in the medieval times. He...he traded Igthorn the location of a powerful relic known as the time stone for a bottle of Gummi Berry juice." Eric explained.

The images of my fellow Gummi Bears being slain in front of me began returning to the forefront of my mind and flashed before my eyes. "Duke Igthorn then used the time stone to travel to the future, acquire his indestructible army and return to his own time and attack in two places simultaneously." Eric admitted to me nearly breaking out into tears. "Gummi Glen and Castle Dunwyn." I said in my state of shock. Eric opened his eyes and turned to look at me. "You act like you were there." He said. The news was still shocking to me and was much to take in. The whole thing began making my head spin and I collapsed to the ground.

I awoke a few hours later to find myself in my bed with Eric sitting next to me. With all of my newly acquired knowledge of how the events of the past had come to be, the sight of him almost made me sick. However, I actually couldn't blame Eric for what his ancestor had done. Plus, there was no way his ancestor could have known what Igthorn was planning in the first place. I sat up in my bed and simply hugged my knees at the memory of my friends and family. "You **were** there. Weren't you?" Eric solemnly asked me with slight shock in his eyes. I simply nodded, tears running down my cheeks from the corners of my eyes. "That means you must have had the time stone when you arrived here." He thought to himself, and then he noticed me crying to myself. "Look, I'm sorry about everything that has happened to you. You must have experienced some horrible things because of my ancestor." He said to me solemnly to try to cheer me up. "You think so?" I sniffed. "I saw all of my fellow gummi bears being slaughtered in front of my eyes, I was pursued by his metal drones and I was tossed into a futuristic nightmare in which I am considered as nothing more than a few thousand gold coins. I think your ancestor needed to be hanged for what he had set in motion."

A whole twenty minutes of silence passed by before there was a loud, forceful knock on the door. Instinctively, I jumped out of bed and dove under it to try and hide from any guests while Eric made his way to the front door. I'd gotten so use to hiding from his visitors that I didn't think much of it. The only things running through my head were, "I still don't know how Igthorn lived so long", and "I wonder where Eric got that scar". I actually should have paid attention to my gut, which was saying to me that something was different about this visitor, but instead I pushed the feeling aside and just watched. Eric had barely made it to the door when two men in black suits and sunglasses kicked it open and stormed in, followed by six other men in black suits and finally an older man wearing a long white coat. The older man looked like he was from an Asian country and kept a thin white moustache just above his lips. His hair was also white and cut so that it dangled no farther than the middle of the back of his neck. He was slowly balding and wore thin glasses. He stood five feet and three inches tall and entered in with a cocky smile painted on his face. "I heard tale of you keeping an actual gummi bear here, Eric Lohengrin." The older man in the white coat said to him. "Doctor Lavender?" Eric gasped. "Could this be true?" The doctor then added. Before Eric could answer, a gruff voice from behind me said, "I've found something, Doctor." I had just turned around to see the face of the voices owner when he reached under the bed and grabbed my right arm with his left hand. I began to struggle to try to get him to release my arm with no luck. With a forceful heave he yanked me out from under the bed and lifted me up to his full height like he was getting his picture taken while holding up a salmon. "Sunni!" Eric gasped. "Let her go!" He then demanded, turning back to Lavender. "An interesting species, aren't they." Doctor Lavender said ignoring Eric's demand, and watching me struggle to get free from the brute's grip around my arm. Lavender slowly walked up to me and I stopped squirming when he got close enough to stair right into my eyes. "I've spent decades researching their culture, but I've never had an actual living gummi bear to study and any remaining gummi bears there have been had already decomposed by now. You, my dear will make an excellent specimen." His eyes showed true curiosity in an evil fashion. "Take her to the lab." He then ordered his thug. "It's time we found out what makes her 'tick'."

Before any of the goons could exit the room however, Eric placed himself in front of the door and spread his arms out wide, blocking their path. It was quickly rectified, though, when one of the men in black suits buried his fist into Eric's stomach, driving the wind out of his lungs. "Eric!" I called out in shock at seeing him get punched. Eric then collapsed into the man's arms and fainted. The man then moved Eric into a nearby chair and they all simply exited the premises. "Eric?" I called out to him hoping to see him at least stir, to know whether or not he was alive. "Eric?" I called out to him again as the entourage marched farther and farther away and closer to their transportation vehicle. I reached out to him, hoping that this all was a dream and that I was simply going to awaken at any moment. No such luck. I was thrown into a limousine where another goon caught me and quickly placed cuffs around my tiny wrists, forced me into the seatbelt. The vehicle then was started and I was hauled away to who-knows-where.


	3. Chapter 3: Pedals of a lavender rose

Chapter 3: Pedals of a lavender rose

It was hard. Every time I seem to find a new friend to ease me through my troubled life, they were taken away from me. Life picks its favorites. I've come to realize that. And, I seem to have been left off of that list as of late. First, my fellow gummi bears and two human friends murdered in front of my eyes and now, I have no idea if Eric has gotten out of the chair, let alone any idea where the men have taken me. In a few hours I've come to learn that Dr. Lavender's first name was Isaac and he was married to a beautiful young woman named Rosanne, whom the other scientists respect greatly and call "Rose". However, whenever she talked to me, I could sense a kind of longing in her voice. Something she wanted badly, but I just couldn't put my finger in it. She would come down to my cylindrical, tempered glass cell that was approximately thirteen feet high and nine feet in diameter and just talk to me. The only scientist in the entire facility to treat me like I was something other than a piece of meat. She would often vent her frustrations out calmly to me and I would just sit there and listen. I found it quite strange how she took to me so easily, probably because I might actually be the only female that has enough time on her hands to actually listen to another's problems. But I was leery of actually getting too close to her, my new found fears of having more friends ripped out from under me had grown in the past few days.

I listened to her and gave whatever kind of advice I had to give. She would often come to me with complaints about how her husband was so obsessed with studying me and how much effort she takes in delaying my dissection. So, more times than not, the scientists would come in and take a small sample of either fur or blood or simply take me out to conduct some kind of weird test using scanners and MRI's or X-rays and such. If I could understand all of the scientific mumbo-jumbo, I'd probably learn more about myself than I ever wanted. And actually, I'd ask Rose any difficult questions and she would answer them by giving me a simple definition. Despite my head's warnings, I ended up being good friends with Rose. That, however, had no effect on the long days of having needles stuck in me and having some of my fur trimmed. Despite my new friendship with her, I found myself wondering, "If, I'm taking up all of her husband's attention, then why doesn't she **want** me dissected? It certainly would end the majority of her drama."

An entire week went by and she continued to see me every two to four hours trying to postpone my dissection and continuing to talk with me. I found myself wondering what happened with Eric every now and then, but I tried to make sure that I never wondered out loud. Until on the seventh day when Rose was venting her frustrations out to me and I just couldn't find my head for pretty much the entire day. "Is something wrong, Sunni?" Rose's angelic voice sang in my ears. "Snapping back to the current reality I turned to look at her gentle smile and warm eyes. "Sorry, Rose. I was just thinking about a friend of mine. He was hurt before I was kidnapped and brought here. I wonder if he's even alive to come and rescue me." I said with my voice following my thoughts. I turned to look out a nearby window, which was still pretty far away from me, in attempt to see his face telling me so stay quiet and perhaps cause a riot or something. "What was his name?" Rose asked. Realizing that she actually was interested in what has happened in **my **life, I was a bit startled, and then I answered her, "Eric Lohengrin." Rose then turned and leaned closer to the glass tube that I was being kept in, intent on listening to my entire story and asked, "And, how did you come to meet the last member of the infamous Lohengrin family?" Shocked once again that she would be interested in the happenings of **my** life after all of her venting and rambling to me, I found myself asking her, "Why do you want to know?" "Well," she answered, "You've been listening to me bitch and complain for an entire week. I think it's about time I listened to your story. First, I would like to know how you got here."

I spent the next few hours retelling of my tragedies and horrors that had passed before my eyes the day of the blitz attack from Igthorn and his mechanical minions. By the end of my story, Rose seemed to have been saddened by the event that I recalled to her, so saddened that she had actually began shedding tears. "So **that's** what he did with my ancestor's machines." She mumbled to herself. "What?" I asked not exactly hearing her. "Why are you crying, I'm the one that **actually** lived through it." "Well, fate must really be cruel to you. You can't seem to get away from your horrible nightmare. It was my ancestor that provided Igthorn with those robots." Rose admitted to me. It finally hit me why she was being so nice to me. She felt responsible for the annihilation of the gummi bears. "They were designed for farming. The robot's sharp legs were designed to stab holes into the ground for the farmer to plant seeds, they also were programmed to drag their hind legs along to make trenches and they were supposed to be operated by remote control. "Yah, instead they were 'stabbing holes' in everything I held dear." I retorted in anger, still irritated at the fact that some people would even **trust** Igthorn. Placing the time stone in his hands was definitely a bad idea. "How long did it take for Igthorn to take over the world?" I asked Rose trying to tell myself that it actually wasn't her fault, just like Eric's. She sighed at me and said, "It took him many years, around three hundred to be precise. No one knows exactly how he lived so long. But, I've heard that it has something to do with a specific blend of gummi berry juice that he discovered." Again, it was back to gummi berry juice. The only blend that Grammi taught me was the stuff that made us bounce. I had never even given the thought to different blends having different effects before until Eric's confession. And now, it has come around full circle once again.

"There has to be a way to stop all of this." I thought out loud. "There might be, but my husband has scheduled your dissection for this afternoon, and I can no longer postpone his decision. The paperwork has passed through and has been approved. My hands are now tied." Rose said to me. My last strand of hope snapped under the strain of my failing confidence. Suddenly, a large rock came crashing through the window, followed by a cylindrical can that began spewing out a large amount of green smoke. First the scientists closest to the window began to cough like crazy and began to run about. Once another can of gas flew in through the window more scientists began coughing and I noticed that the smoke also irritated their eyes and they were blinded temporarily. Rose stood up like a shot and ran as fast as she could to get herself a respirator mask from the toxic experiment's area of the lab. You know, the area that all of the scientists keep quarantined off and conveniently hang up those green gas masks against the wall. Ya, that one. However, she inhaled some of the gas and her eyes began to sting as she coughed and coughed, while making her way back to me.

Safe in my glass cage for now, I began to notice a dark figure carrying a black duffel bag climb in through the broken window and also make his/her way toward me. He/she got over to where I was located, and began looking around for a something in the control panel. When Rose finally reached my area, I began to worry for her. If the two get in a fight, it is likely that she'd get hurt. I figured the invader probably had at least one weapon. Instead, the two looked at each other for some time and Rose finally pressed a few buttons on the console that released my glass prison's lock and the glass began sliding down into the floor. The unknown criminal then waited for the glass to get down a certain distance before throwing me my own gas mask, which I struggled to put on quickly.

The green gas quickly filled up my prison the lower the glass had gotten. Rose signaled for me to follow the two of them and we made our way into the next portion of the facility. The mysterious intruder threw these smoke bombs into every room we entered, causing every guard to tear up and cough like crazy. We finally turned a corner and made our way to a specific laboratory that was labeled "Main Testing Lab: Employees Only" and Rose quickly pressed a series of buttons on a digital pad that made a combination code lock. She then slid a card through the card slider attached to the digital pad and we heard a large bolt detach itself from the large steel door and the door itself began to slide toward the left. As the door continued automatically sliding, three guards had caught up with us and began firing weapons at us, hand guns that fired nine millimeter brass bullets. Though they were still coughing uncontrollably, they were still able to fire almost right at us. The mystery person reached into his/her duffel bag once more and pulled out a hand gun of his/her own, loaded a clip of the same size bullets and returned fire. His/her shots were more accurate, with him/her being unaffected by the gas. Bullets hit the first guard in the right shoulder and forehead, his blood shooting out the moment the bullets struck. The second guard took a single shot in the heart and he fell backward from the impact as well. The dark shades of the third guard were shattered from one of the bullets that struck him in the left eye and he also took a bullet in the right kidney. All three of them fell dead from the shots.

At this time, the door had slid open half way. Once the mystery rescuer, had dispatched of the guards, he/she reached into the duffel bag once more, pulled out another hand gun and tossed it to Rose, who caught it with grace in her soft hands. The mystery person then pulled out two fully loaded clips and tossed them one at a time for Rose to catch. Rose quickly loaded one of them and slipped the other one in her left hip pocket. She then quietly slipped into the main laboratory ready to shoot the gun if need be.


	4. Chapter 4: Rebels of the underground

Chapter 4: Rebels of the underground

Inside the main lab, confusion began setting in with the whole situation. The mystery person jumped in front of our group as Rose tapped in a few numbers and closed the large steel door behind her. She then pulled off the mechanism's covering and re-routed a few wires to jam the lock. She then pulled off her gas mask to reveal her beautiful face once again and fill her lungs with fresh air. I did the same because it is quite difficult to breath in these things despite it designed to help you breath in clouded air. It was the mystery person's turn to finally reveal him/her face. The person pulled off the large face mask and pulled back the hood on the black hooded sweater to reveal a familiar hair style and color. When the person turned around, I was finally able to get a glimpse of the person's face, a familiar face that I had longed to see for an entire week since my kidnapping. "Eric?" I gasped. "What? You didn't actually think that that thug's punch hurt me **that **badly, did you?" He asked with confidence. "I thought you knew me better than that." "How did you..." I started to ask but was interrupted by Rose. "A device of my creation called the 'dreamscape probe'. It allowed me to see into your dreams while you were asleep. I found how much you dreamt about him, so I searched for where he lived and came to explain the situation to him. We both learned that our ancestors were responsible for creating this world the way it is now and wish to help in any way possible to make amends for out ancestor's foolishness." She explained to me. "You could say that we were creating an underground rebellion against Igthorn."

"How touching." Dr. Lavender's voice could be heard saying from behind one of the large devices across the room. "So **that's** the reason you had for stalling the gummi bear's dissection." "I have a **name** you know! It's Sunni!" I yelled at the mad scientist. "He doesn't care about your name. To him, you're just another experiment." Rose said to me while aiming her gun at Dr. Lavender. "Wait, isn't he your husband or something?" I thought out loud. "It actually was a forced marriage." She explained. "Something Igthorn came up with to get us to get along. We always had differences in the way we studied and researched, so Igthorn immediately forced us to marry each other as a sort of punishment for the lack of progress. Love never entered the equation in the slightest." Shocked at that new found bit of information, I began to understand what was going on a little more.

A sharp pounding came from behind the large steel door that we had entered through. It was clear that we weren't getting out that way. Dr. Lavender began laughing maniacally when he discovered that that we had no way out. He inhaled deeply and sharply before speaking in a sinister and insane tone, raising his voice in both volume and pitch, "It seems that **this** rebellion will end worse than all of the others!" "Others?" I began to question, and then it just hit me on how stupid I sounded. "There have been about four other rebellions that I can recall that even made an impact on Igthorn's iron rule. And all of them were erased from the face of the planet." Eric said sadly. Thinking of all of those lives simply erased from existence made me slightly sick to my stomach. "Yes, **your father** at least knew his way around a strategy! Looks like you inherited your mother's foolishness!" Lavender taunted and began laughing hysterically once again.

Apparently, Lavender had struck a nerve in Eric. I could see tears running from his eyes while he was clenching his teeth and shaking like he was freezing. His eyes were tense and there was the flame of hatred dancing within them. His breathing had become rougher and his hands gripped his hand gun tighter as his rage grew. "Shut up! You don't know anything about me!" Eric shouted at the top of his lungs. "No need to get so upset, boy." Lavender continued to taunt. "After all, we all can't be as great and remembered as he." "I said SHUT UP!" Eric yelled as his finger squeezed the trigger of his gun, firing a single bullet from its barrel. The bullet's trajectory struck Lavender in the left shoulder and he was thrown into a slight spiral as he crashed to the ground. His red blood began to leak out as he lay on the hard concrete floor. "You think you scare me by simply firing a pitiful weapon like **that**? Thanks to you, my new defense system is now active." The moment he stopped speaking, a pace in the far wall began to slide open and out crawled a mechanical creature designed to look like a giant gargoyle with wings.

The mechanical beast let out an ear shattering high pitched screech that rang throughout the entire facility. "Meet my Gargoyle. The first and **only** flying defense robot that is fully automated with an AI." Lavender laughed hysterically. "What's an AI?" I asked Rose. "It's an 'artificial intelligence'. Basically a computer programmed to think for itself. Treat it as if it were actually alive but expect it to be completely loyal to Isaac." "Like those **things** that slaughtered my family?" I gasped. There was still a lot that I needed to learn even though I had been here almost two months. Doctor Lavender then began laughing his hysterical laugh as he ran as fast as he could to the opening in the wall where the metal creature had come out of. Eric tried to aim his gun at the insane scientist on more time but the large metal creature placed its long tail in his line of fire. The moment Eric had turned his attention back to the mechanical Gargoyle the creature let out another deafening screech and raised its right arm to attempt to pound Eric flat. I dove for Eric the moment the Gargoyle's hand came crashing down and was lucky to tackle him out of harm's way before he was crushed.

The gargoyle then turned its gaze to the two of us intent on trying again when a few bullets ricocheted off of its face. Turning to look in the direction of the recent attack it noticed Rose continuing to fire off single shots until her clip ran empty. Pressing the trigger three times before realizing that nothing exited the barrel she gazed at the gun and was swatted away like a fly. She went sailing across the room over tables and through a dark purplish liquid and finally landing around five feet from the wall. She struggled to rise to her feet while her breath had escaped her from the hit, coughing and gasping for air. This thing seemed just as invincible as the farm drones that destroyed Gummi Glen. I was about to panic when Rose called out to me, "Sunni, you need to get onto the back of its neck. It's the only opening you can use to sever its main CPU." Eric and I ran away from another attack from the Gargoyle's hand and I called back to her, "What the heck is a CPU?" Eric answered that question quickly, "Just look for a rectangular box with a lot of wires coming out of it. Like one of the car stereos I showed you on the first week you were traded to me." I still didn't like to be reminded that I was worth money but that at least gave me a visual to look for.

Looking back at the Gargoyle I realized that it would be nearly impossible to climb without getting spotted and/or hurt. "I'll need some gummi berry juice, original blend." I called out to both Eric and Rose. Confused, Eric called out to me, "Which one was the original blend?" Thinking of how to describe it quickly enough, I simply said, "It gives humans and ogres super human strength for around a minute or two." Suddenly, Rose called from behind me, "Sunni!" When I turned to look at her, she had crawled to a nearby chemistry table and had a corked flask of a thick, purple liquid in her right hand poised to be thrown. When she threw it to me she said, "Catch!" I ran toward the soaring flask with the intent of catching the liquid. It would prove difficult, though. The Gargoyle was determined to dispose of me before I could catch the bottle. It raised its right arm readying to smash me when I had reached a specific point until the sound of a gun rang in the air and one of its red, glass eyes shattered to pieces. With the Gargoyle distracted, I caught the flask of liquid and asked, "Is this what I think it is?" "It's a synthetic mixture. This is where we did research on the juice to maximize its time limitations. I just hope it helps." Rose informed me as she slowly pulled herself up using the table. I looked at the bottle questionably for a short second and then shrugged my shoulders and said to myself, I got nothing to lose anyway." I then pulled the cork out of the flask's opening and tipped it against my mouth and drank of the liquid.

The familiar scent, the familiar taste, and the familiar rush of energy flowing through my body. Just like Grammi used to make. I began to feel my body soften and my legs grew stronger. I hoped to heaven that this was the reaction I believed that it was, and so I ran toward the nearest wall and jumped onto it. My legs and torso scrunched together like a rubber ball being thrown against a wall and finally retracted, creating the familiar bounce of the original juice. It was slightly more intense than the original though, I sprang from the wall to the ceiling in a single bounce where a bottle of regular gummi berry juice I would have had to gain more spring by bouncing a few times before launching that high. Even though I actually didn't make it completely to the ceiling, I was able to press my right paw against it before plummeting back down. I bounded off of the Gargoyle's armor plating a few times before actually making it inside the opening in the back of the neck. It was a small opening so I barely had room to spare when I plunged right into it. I could hear the Gargoyle's screech even from inside the creature. It was strange being inside the thing. It was nothing more than a bunch of familiar parts and wiring. Most parts I recognized from learning how to repair cars from Eric and others I had never seen before in my life. The vast majority of it was wiring however and it was so clustered in there that there was no way to get anywhere without getting tangled in it. "How am I gonna find a small box in this? Talk about your needle in a hay stack."

Outside, the Gargoyle was acting like it was panicking due to my entrance into its metallic body. It was thrashing around and destroying random things that got in its way. It even began to slam its back against the walls hoping to either shake me out of there or crush me when its back plating collapsed inward. While it was doing that, I was frantically yanking out wires hoping that it would do the trick. Eventually, the Gargoyle simply stopped moving and crashed to the ground. Dazed, I crawled out of the Gargoyle's metal carcass and staggered toward my friends. Eric ran up to me and held me on my feet for a little while so I could let the world stop spinning. "Did we win?" I asked still delirious. "Yah." Eric said to me. "But Lavender got away." "Oh, I like lavender..." I said, my head still spinning. Eric looked at me like I was insane for a small moment until I added, "It's a pretty color." Then he simply shook his head and smiled in slight relief and amusement all rolled into one.

Rose came hopping up to us on her right leg. Her left leg seemed to have been injured in the struggle. "There still is the matter of escaping." She informed us with pain on her face. Eric looked around for any means of escaping. He soon located a window that was decently high up. "And me without a grappling hook." He mumbled, mentally kicking himself. Then the light bulb clicked on in his head. He turned to Rose and said, "How long does that synthetic formula last?" Rose understood his basic plan and answered, "I have no idea. It's never been tested on a gummi bear before." By this time my head had slowed down enough for me to understand what they wanted from me. "It still feels like it is still in effect." I said to them. "Now we need something for a rope..." Eric said looking around some more. Eventually he located a fire hose that proved to be long enough to use. Eric aimed his gun at the window and fired at the glass, shattering it into hundreds of pieces. Then I took the bundled up hose and bounced up to the broken window, landing on the flat part where the window was placed into the frame. I dropped the hose down to Eric and Rose and tossed the other end down as far as it could go down the other side of the building. I then held on for dear life as Eric first climbed up and rigged up a hold for the hose and slid down the other side. After that, it was Rose's turn. She took a little longer to climb out of the building, due to her broken leg, but when she had finally made it out of the facility, we kept under cover of shrubs and foliage to stay hidden from any guards until we were clear from the spot lights. After that, Eric led us to the vehicle that he used to transport himself to the facility. We entered the vehicle while Eric started the engine and he drove off back to the workshop for some supplies.


	5. Chapter 5: Past nightmares

Chapter 5: Past nightmares

Our stay at the work shop was longer than anticipated. I wound up in the bathroom heaving up literally every drop of synthetic gummi berry juice I had consumed. The effects wore off the moment I walked in through the front door, and immediately, it disagreed with my stomach and there was no holding it down at all. So I dashed to the restroom as fast as I could and just hung my face over the porcelain bowl. Awful, sickening noises came from my mouth as the juice was forced back up my throat from my stomach and out of my mouth. Somehow the juice felt like melted gum coming back up and it had with it a bitter/sour flavor that burned my tongue as it passed over it. My head felt bubbly and I was almost unable to see straight for a time. Twenty minutes passed by while I heaved out the synthetic juice. When I finally emerged from the rest room, my head began spinning and I was barely able to maintain my balance. The bubbles continued to pop in my head and I found myself so delirious that I fainted where I stood. Luckily Eric moved in quick to catch me before I collapsed to the ground.

I stayed asleep during the entire car ride to the new location, and my dreams were of my horrors. Zummi finished explaining what he had discovered about the time stone when the leg of the farming robot plunged through his back and out his chest, his blood spattering all over my front. His eyes implored me to run and so I did in fear. Just as I moved one of the drones lunged at me and narrowly missed, crashing right into the one that stabbed Zummi. The two damaged each other enough to cease functioning completely, their sharp legs piercing through each other. Electricity and sparks flew out of their wounds. Panicking, I dashed out of the room and saw Cubby lying in the main hall, clutching his stomach in excruciating pain and bleeding profusely. I tried to assist him but he stopped breathing the moment I touched his head. Suddenly another drone burst through the door of Gusto's room with him skewered on two of its sharp legs, crying out in pain, blood pouring out of his wounds. He looked over in my direction and I started running toward him to try to get the creature off of him. "Sunners!" He called to me like he was angry that I even thought of coming in to help. I stopped in my tracks and stood there as he told me, "Run...away!" The drone then pulled out its left leg and thrust it through Gusto's chest. He cried out in pain for a few seconds, and then simply fell limp, his eyes quickly glazing over and blood running out of his mouth and wounds. The drone then simply tossed Gusto's lifeless body back into the room like a rag doll and turned its attention to me. Fearing for my life I ran away from the spider-like metal creature as fast as I could, it moved in silently and quickly and was on me in seconds looking to thrust its sharp leg through me like it did Gusto.

Before the creature could even think of stabbing me, Tummy came in from nowhere and bowled it over with his shoulder, followed up and lifted it over his head to throw it into another of those creatures. The two again pierced through each other and ceased to function. "We've have to move, NOW!" Tummy said to me. I have never seen him so focused in my entire life. He was usually the lazy one that thought more about food than anything else. I couldn't complain though, knowing that he could be so bold when the situation called for nothing else was comforting. The sound of sliding metal and the strange clicking noise of the monster's legs came from virtually everywhere. Tummi just stood his ground and clenched his fist tight enough to crack his knuckles. When one of the metallic creatures emerged, he would avoid its strike, grab it by the sharp leg and either tossed it into one of its own kind or against the closest wall, and slowly lead me toward one of our secret entrances. It was only when three attacked him at once did he fall in the heat of battle. One of them lunged at him from the front while a second came in from the left side and, with one swipe of its sharp leg, cut off Tummi's left hand at the wrist. Yelping in pain, Tummi stood his ground still, and snagged the lunging robots with his right hand. However, a third one darted in from underneath and plunged both its front legs into his chubby body and tackled him onto his back.

I turned and ran while the robots continued to maul Tummi. Scared out of my wits, and in a state of sheer panic, the only thing on my mind now was to get away, any way that I could. I headed toward the quick cars to see if they could be my ticket out. I ran by the kitchen and noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Hoping it wasn't what I thought it was, I backed up to get a better look. Unfortunately, it pretty much was what I feared. Both Grammi and Gruffi were lying on the floor of the kitchen within a foot from touching each other, a large pool of their blood soaking their fur and clothes. I could see Grammi's eyes glazed over, they seemed like they were staring right at me for a while and I returned to my state of fear and panic and took off toward the quick cars.

When I finally reached the caves for the quick cars, there was Igthorn standing there, however, something was different with him. He was tall and quite built for a human. It could be that his tunics head covering was missing and that his black hair was revealed. Or was it the blood lust in his eyes? I noticed that he had a strange gadget mounted on his head that covered his right eye and he was holding some kind of stone in his left hand. I witnessed four of the metal creatures working together on carrying the "Great Book of Gummi" toward Igthorn and presented it to him. He said something about going to the future to himself as he picked up the book and held it up in front of him.

"Zummi would want me to get the book before escaping." I thought to myself. I sneaked around and hid behind the caves stalactites while making my way toward Igthorn. When I got close enough I waited for him to send his drones away and then dashed in to snatch the book. I smashed into his back as hard as I could and knocked him flat onto his face. "What? How did you escape my drones?" He asked slightly irate. Rather than answering him, I scrambled around and snatched up his weird stone and the book and then began to run off toward the quick cars. However, before I could get far, Igthorn tackled me to the ground and snatched the book from my hands. The stone went sliding across the floor toward the quick cars. "THE TIME STONE!" Igthorn gasped as it slid out of his reach. His distraction was my opportunity for escape. I scrambled back up to my feet and made a beeline for the quick cars, scooped up the stone on my way there, dove into the car and pulled the lever to speed off. Realizing that he would be too big for some of the quick tunnels, Igthorn simply cried out loud in frustration. I stopped the quick car at the first stop available and got out as fast as I could. I emerged from the quick tunnel entrance out into a thick forest and the first thing I noticed was the right arm of a gummi bear. When I went to go and inspect who it was, I found that it was Ursa's arm. Without her body attached. Her body actually had been pinned to a nearby tree by one of the metallic creatures' legs that had broken off in the struggle. Her arm had been cut off near the base of her shoulder and she bled out from her wounds. Buddy, Grubbi, and Gritty were slain nearby, each with stab wounds that passed completely through their bodies.

I clutched the stone to my chest as the air hung thick and moist. Rain began to fall from the sky and fell heavier and heavier with every second. I stood there, frozen in fear for a short time until the first bolt of lightning brought the image of Calla's face to the forefront of my mind. Worried for my best friend, I ran toward the castle as fast as I could, mumbling to myself, "Please be alright. Please be alright. Please be alright." My dream then began to fade and I found myself moaning and tossing in my sleep. My eyes opened quickly and I shot awake with sad tears streaming from the corners of my eyes. My breath was heavy and my memories finally clear on the horrors that I had seen.


	6. Chapter 6: Sorrowful truths

Chapter 6: Sorrowful truths

An hour passed by while the rain beat down harshly on the exterior of the black vehicle I've come to know as a "mustang". Rose was driving now, and Eric sat in the back seat comforting me by laying my head on his lap while I drifted in and out of sleep. Eventually, I had fallen back completely asleep during the trip and was unable to keep the horrid nightmares from continuing anymore. While I slept, Rose and Eric conversed with each other, planning on where they were going to stay. They needed to find a place that security wasn't going to track us and a place that was going to keep the last gummi bear in existence safe from harm. "She can't keep running forever." Rose informed him. "I know." Eric responded solemnly. "But I still wish I could keep her from her nightmares." His voice was soft and gentle as he spoke about protecting me that way. "I care for her too, Eric. But I also realize that the only way to help her survive is to send her home." Rose argued. "I...just don't want her to hurt anymore." Eric said even more solemnly than before. He could tell from my tossing and groaning, that I was having another nightmare. He lifted his left hand up and gently placed it on my shoulder and the feeling of comfort washed over me while I dreamt and my nightmare turned into a blissful dream. "You realize that she is going to find out sooner or later?" Rose reminded him. Erick simply shushed Rose and whispered to her, "Let her dream something good. She deserves it after everything she has experienced so far." Rose lightly shook her head at the fact that Eric wanted to keep me ignorant to some vital information for as long as possible. "Either way, we still have to find the time stone." She then mumbled to herself.

Far away, in the basement of the tower that reached past the clouds, a figure enveloped in shadows and surrounded by large wires was breathing loudly, deeply and slowly as if his life had wasted away, but he refused to simply die. He was completely surrounded by screens that flashed and flickered with images. A member of the city's security force stood in front of the figure's door and nervously typed in the pass code to open it. The door gracefully slid to the guard's left and he took two steps into the room. He began to speak in a formal militaristic speech pattern and he stood at perfect attention. "Lord Igthorn, the southern research labs have had a breach. The main lab had been damaged badly and there were reports of them having a gummi bear in their possession." The shadowy figure stirred and his heavy breathing shivered slightly. "What color?" The figure asked in a weakened and aged voice that displayed angst and disappointment. "They said it had yellow fur sir." "So, little one, this is where the time stone has brought you." The figure said to himself. "Who was in charge of the main laboratory?" "The soldier looked at his notes and said, "Isaac Lavender, sir." "Where is he?" The figure asked evening his breathing. "We...don't know sir. He...vanished without a trace. We...cannot find him...sir." The guard admitted with much nervousness. Suddenly a pair of white glowing eyes opened around where the shadowy figure's face was located. "That's very disappointing." The figure maliciously said to the guard. Somehow the guard had an idea of what was to come and that scared the spit pot of him. And rightfully so. Almost out of nowhere, a short, golden yellow streak of light lodged itself into the center of the guard's chest. The moment it hit, the guard was thrust to the ground, on his back. He suddenly felt an intense pain in his chest like something had begun expanding rapidly in his body, he screamed out in agony as his chest and stomach began expanding like a balloon being filled with air until the guard exploded form the pressure. Blood and flesh was thrown around the room, the blood splattering against the walls and the guard's innards scattering in random directions. Moments later around eight gorgeous, young women wearing black and white maid uniforms came in through the door the guard had entered earlier and began cleaning up the remains of the guard. The figure in shadows then turned to a screen at his left side and spoke into it. "Send a squadron out to locate the gummi bear. And send another out to locate the whereabouts of Doctor Isaac Lavender. He just booked his last appointment with me." Another guard's face that was being shown on the monitor simply said, "Yes sir." And the monitor turned back to searching the facility for any signs of treachery. However, Igthorn ignored his monitor and simply watched as the maids cleaned up his mess.

Eric gently shook me awake when Rose stopped the car at her parent's old house far away from the city. Still groggy, I sat up and rubbed my eyes to try and clear out the sleep. When I gazed upon the house, I saw that despite it looking old, it looked taken care of. The exterior of the house was painted bright gray with natural looking trim. The front door was a light brown with a crystal pained front window in the general shape of a tall oval with a rose in the middle of it. It was a fairly big house and looked fairly beautiful even in the stormy weather. First thing Rose did was walk around the perimeter of the building acting as if she was looking for something. When she located a metallic box about two feet wide by two feet tall by two feet thick, that had a double door front to it, she asked Eric, "Did you acquire what I asked you to?" Eric then made his way to the driver's side of the mustang, reached down and pulled the lever that released the trunk. He then made his way to the trunk, lifted it up, reached inside and brought out a glass orb about six inches in diameter that had two odd shaped metal diodes perfectly across from each other. Inside the orb was a ball of soft blue light that shone as gently as the stars in the sky on a clear night. "What is **that**?" I asked genuinely curious and dazzled by the thing. Rose briskly walked up to Eric and gently lifted the orb from his hands while she said to me, "It's a high frequency neuron power cell. Pretty much, this thing could power a city for a year. Or, in this case, power an entire house for two hundred years."

We followed her to the box she located earlier and watched as she opened the doors and revealed the two connecters for the diodes. We watched as she gently placed the power cell inside the box making sure that everything was hooked up just right and closed the doors to the box. She then reached into her lab coat and pulled out some sort of heavy duty lock and locked the doors shut. Obviously to keep others from stealing the power cell. Curious, I asked Eric, "Why was she so meticulous with it?" He looked at me and answered, "Because, if she dropped it, there would be an explosion big enough to see from outer space." "Outer space?" I asked confused. Eric simply pointed to the clouds and said, "Out with all of the stars." At this point, the rain had stopped and the clouds parted, revealing a half moon and an endless sea of sparkling stars, each glittering and gleaming like rare stones shining from the light of the moon. It had been a while since I had seen the stars and the moon, but something toward the back yard of the house caught my eye. It was a familiar sight, a large tree that was twisted around itself. Many large knot holes and limb stumps that were hollowed out and a familiar sight of wild bushes that sprouted various colors of berries. "Gummi Glen?" I asked myself gasping form nostalgia.

I found myself magnetized to the sight of my old home. Noticing that a couple thousand years of neglect only allowed the berry bushes to grow wild and rampant, I plucked a purple berry from a nearby bush and tasted it. The berry was slightly sour and wild to the taste rather than sweet and lovely like they used to be. I slowly made my way to one of the entrances, noticing that it had been widened to the size of a fully grown human. I guessed that this was how Igthorn got out of the glen. The enlarged hole was crude and looked like it was dug by a clumsy spiraling blade of sorts. Parts of the ground had caved in for reasons that escape me for the moment, and the tree even looked worse for wear. Ivy had choked it off and just about killed it. I stared down into the enlarged hole made by Igthorn trying to escape from the glen and all I was greeted with was black darkness and silence. The sound of Cubby's playing was nowhere to be heard, and I even wished to hear Grammi and Gruffy arguing, but there was still nothing, just silence and the sound of the wind howling through the tree's openings and branches.

A few drops of liquid dripped onto my shoes as I approached the glen closer. It only was later when I realized that they were my tears streaming down my face once again. I continued to peer down into the black abyss, hoping to eventually see Zummi or Tummi walk by and say, "Welcome home." Nothing happened however. "I grew up in this house and never once did I think that this was a gummi bear home." Rose admitted with deep surprise in her voice. She and Eric wondered close to me and simply stared at the tree in amazement. "I always thought that wild animals burrowed here." She then added. Eric knelt down and placed his left hand on my right shoulder and said, "It's late, we'll help you explore it tomorrow. Alright?" Snapping back to my reality, I solemnly nodded and whipped the tears from my eyes.


	7. Chapter 7: Return to the nightmare

Chapter 7: Return to the nightmare

The time was around four thirty at night. I was still unable to get any sleep, thinking about how close I was to my old home. Eventually I got out of me bed in one of the guest rooms of the house, located a device Eric called a "flash light" and used its light to lead me back to the glen. I snuck through the front door of the house keeping as quiet as possible, opening the door slowly to try and cut down on the creaking. Once outside, I slowly closed the door to the house and crept towards the glen. Aiming the flash light at the gummi berry bushes I recalled the differences between the berries from my own time and these wild berries.

Continuing on toward the main entrance of the glen, I aimed the light down as far into the tunnel as it could reach. A sharp bend in the tunnel kept me from seeing completely into the glen however. So, I slowly climbed into the ruggedly enlarged hole and made my way down.

The feel of dry tough dirt passed under my paw as I slid down the entrance tunnel reminded me somewhat of the way we would jump into and slide down while hiding from humans and escaping ogres. I descended deeper into the tunnel until I emerged in to the glen itself. Aiming the flash light around the main room I imagined what it all used to look like. The upside down glass dome on the ceiling that was filled with water from the outside due to its location under a nearby pond, the hand carved furniture made by Gruffi, the elegant paintings of past gummi's that lived in the glen.

My imagination crumbled when another source of light shone from the enlarged entrance and started making its way toward me. I switched off my flash light, hurried over to the entrance's right side wall and pressed my back against it to hide my presence. The light grew larger and larger until its original source emerged with the figure wielding it. Apparently, Eric was a light sleeper and heard me sneak out of the house and followed me. "Eric?" I gasped when I realized it was him. He quickly spun around and shined his flash light in my face, with a look of slight shock in his eyes. The light was intense and I had to cover my eyes. "Sorry, Sunni. You startled me." He admitted to me as he moved the position of the light away from my eyes and down near my feet. "And you, me." I said to him trying to blink away the new annoying spot that displayed itself in front of my eyes. "So, this was your old home?" He solemnly asked, looking around using the light from the flash light. He kept the device in his right hand so I walked up and hugged his left arm. "Yah. It used to be." I sadly answered. He then looked at me with his right eyebrow raised and asked, "Couldn't sleep?" I looked up at him slightly surprised and simply hugged his arm slightly tighter and nodded. He then looked down the hallway and thought out loud, "Since we're here, might as well look around. Right?" He turned his gaze back toward me and I saw that genuine kindness in his eyes I saw the first day I met him. Afraid of proceeding because of the horrors I've seen here, but still magnetized to explore the depths of the glen, I hesitated while staring down the flash light's shaft of light and again tightened my grip on Eric's arm.

"You don't have to push yourself to do this if you don't want to." Eric said, sensing my hesitation. I just stared down the hallway with a look of determination and fear painted on my face. I knew that sooner or later, I'd have to go in and explore my old home. Bad memories or not, I needed this. Eric sighed in defeat and then asked, "You want me to come along don't you?" I just nodded in affirmation. "Alright, I'll lead then. When you want to turn back, you lead, alright?" Again I stayed silent and just nodded. He began walking through the glen, watching the low ceiling so as to not hit his head too much. The first stop was the kitchen. All throughout the kitchen a rotten stench filled the air. I saw the remains of Grammi and Gruffi near the stove. Their bones picked clean and their clothes tattered by rats, bugs and decay. Although the smell was rank, it wasn't exactly the smell of death. It was sour, much like the smell of rotten berries or fruit. Trying to use the collars of our shirts to help siphon the smell, Eric and I approached the door that led to the cellar. Eric reached down and grabbed the handle of the wooden door and pulled it towards him. The door swung open and around six large, fat rats scurried past our feet. We danced around them at the mere sight of the critters trying to avoid stepping on them and at the same time trying to keep them from stepping on us. Shock and mild panic washed through our bodies as the rats scurried away. When we finally calmed down from the sudden adrenaline rush, it was pretty apparent where the strong sour smell was coming from. Eric pointed the flash light down into the room and we noticed the wooden barrels stored down there. Some of them even had swarms of flies hovering just above them, indicating that the contents within have been spoiled for a long time. The smell began to be a bit much for both of us so Eric closed the door quickly and we proceeded to the next area of the glen.

We walked down the halls, Eric with the flash light and me, still clutching his arm. At some point we passed by a familiar artist's studio, and I desperately wanted Gusto to poke his head out from behind his latest work and say, "Welcome home Summers! Who's your friend?" However, the only thing that awaited us was a room full of tattered paintings, chunks of granite and marble scattered about the room and another skeleton left in a pose as if it had been tossed like a rag doll while it still had flesh on it. Dried blood stained the wooden floor in a splattered trail leading from the door to the skeleton. Tears began running down my cheeks once again as I recalled the brutality of the invasion by Igthorn. I buried my face in Eric's side as I began to bawl from the sadness permeating the air in the glen. Even Eric began to cry from the mere sight of seeing me sad like this. He simply closed his eyes and let the tears run down his cheeks. When I wouldn't stop crying, he knelt down to my level and wrapped his arms around me, keeping me close to his chest. I finally began to calm down by the sound and feel of his heart beat as it thumped smoothly and evenly in my ears and I fell right to sleep in his embrace.

I awoke the next morning back in the room given to me by Rose. The smell of cooked eggs and ham hung in the air and my stomach agreed that collapsing from starvation wasn't gonna help anyone. I was just about to get out of bed and make my way to the kitchen when Eric opened the door to my room with a bed table with my meal sitting on top of it. He gracefully brought it over to me and gently placed it over my lap. The steam coming off of the food carried with it the gentle aroma of freshness. The eggs were scrambled with little squares of red and green bell peppers mixed inside, the ham was hot and moist, shredded hash browns sat beside the eggs, golden brown and mildly seasoned. Placed beside the plate, stood a glass of cold white milk that rocked gently as the table was place in front of me. A metal fork and knife also sat beside the plate, ready to be used. Surprised, I looked up at Eric inquisitively to try and ask him what the occasion was. "You've been through so many traumas lately. I just thought it would be nice to remind you that you're not alone in this." He said as if he read my mind, his gaze so gentle and kind yet sad. "Eric, you don't have to feel responsible for what's happened. I don't blame you **or** Rose." I explained to him. He sat down at the end of my bed, smiled warmly at me and said, "Thanks for that Sunni, but I'm doing this for a different reason." I was puzzled, but grateful. I picked up the fork and knife and began cutting away bites of the food just large enough to chew on and started eating.


	8. Chapter 8: Solitude of the soul

Chapter 8: Solitude of the soul

For most of the day Eric encouraged me to give the remains of my fellow gummis a proper burial. We traveled around the glen gathering remains and having me identify their names. Gently placing the bones in a proper lying position before heaving the dirt over them, we all made doubly sure to pay our respects to each grave before seeking out and burying the next bear. It was Eric's idea to bury them in the midst of the gummi berries and I agreed that it was the most proper thing to do for them. Eventually, we even located the remains of the Barbics and placed them in their own graves in the gummi berry patch. Using wide chunks of wood with names carved on them as temporary tombstones, we finally completed the last grave and finished paying our respects. The sun was just hanging half way over the horizon by the time we were completely finished and the three of us were exhausted and starving. I paid one final moment of silent longing on particularly Gusto's grave before traversing back to the house, kneeling down in front of the tombstone and allowing a few tears to absorb into the soil.

"Your boyfriend?" Eric asked when he noticed me grieving over his grave. "Not really. I mean, I liked him like that. But I don't think he paid much attention to much else other than his art." I admitted as some more tears strolled down my cheeks. I sniffed as much of my sadness back into my head as I could, but the saddening question still echoed in my head. "Why?" I asked out loud. "Why what?" Eric questioned. "Why did this happen? How did Igthorn become so vengeful, so bloodthirsty?" I squeaked out as more tears began flooding out of my eyes. The more I thought about it the faster and heavier my tears escaped. "I wish I had an answer to that, Sunni. I really wish I did." Eric solemnly said to me as he placed his hand in between my shoulder blades. Instinctively I buried my face in his side once again and simply cried my sorrows out. He never seemed to mind my constant crying and it comforted me so know that he would be there to soak up my tears. I cried for another ten minutes with my furry face buried into the right side of his shirt, drenching it with my tears. I could feel his abs with my right forearm as I gripped at the left side of his shirt to press my face deeper into his right side. He tried to help me settle down by rubbing gently against the back of my head and shifting his hand to my back once again.

It was another ten minutes before I calmed down enough to stop crying. Eric knelt down and wrapped his arms around me. He then lifted me up, supporting me by my back and just under the buttocks, carrying me like a young human girl. Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around his neck and nuzzled my face into his neck. He was plenty strong enough to carry me with ease, and started walking back to the house as the last rays of sun were escaping over the horizon. Not exactly asleep, I nestled down in Eric's embrace silently hoping to myself that it would never end. A small smile stretched across my face as he fidgeted with the door handle using the hand that rested under my buttocks, and slowly pushed the door open with his right leg. Don't get me wrong, it was amusing, but I was smiling for a different reason.

He made his way past the kitchen when Rose noticed him carrying me like a daughter. "Eric, she's not going to replace you sister." She exclaimed. "I know that. And I'm not trying to turn her into Ella. She isn't her, she is Sunni. Last of the gummi bears. And, do me a favor and stop using that dreamscope probe. Dreams should remain private unless retold by the dreamer." Eric said as he gave Rose a menacing look. "What do you mean, 'last of the gummi bears'?" I asked slightly curious. "There are whole other civilizations out there on... other... lands." My voice trailed off as I realized the connection between things that I had learned and this new bit of information. Eric looked down at the floor ashamed that he couldn't tell me outright. "Igthorn took three hundred years to take over the world because he went on a massive gummi hunt, locating and destroying every gummi bear in existence." Rose informed me. "Enough Rose. She doesn't need to suffer more than she has to." Eric raised his voice at her. "Eric," I solemnly said, "Not knowing is actually worse." "Eric shifted his gaze downward again and solemnly said to both Rose and I, "I'm sorry. Yes, eventually Igthorn eradicated every gummi in existence and simply moved on to controlling the entire world through war tactics he had acquired through his lifetime." "You told me before that you know exactly how Ightorn was able to live for so long." I asked, remembering his words when he admitted that his ancestor was responsible for revealing the time stone to him. "Yes. Well, that is knowledge passed down by my ancestor as well." He answered. "You know that different blends of gummi berry juice produce different effects, right." "Yes, and I also know that you need to stir it right or it won't blend well and you need to hit the pot with enough force to get the bubbles out. If you hit it too soft, the batch spoils the moment it is cooled and if you hit it too hard, the bubbles burst while inside the juice, causing the whole thing to explode." Eric and Rose stared at me dumbfounded. "What? Grammi taught me to mix gummi berry juice when I was younger." I stated while slightly blushing. "Wow." Eric exclaimed, rightly impressed. Rose just continued to stare at me with her mouth hanging open and a baffled look on her face.

"Anyway", Eric continued after settling through his shock, "After his first initial 'hunt', in the glen we were just in, he acquired a particular book that revealed all of the gummi secrets." "The Great Book of Gummi." I deduced. "So, **that's** what it's called. He eventually read the book from cover to cover and found a chapter describing the different effects of gummi berry juice. And references to the very recipe book he needed to create a blend of gummi berry juice that grants longevity and limitless youth at the same time." Eric continued. Upon hearing that pit of news, I gasped at the very concept and placed my right paw over my mouth, my eyes wide with shock and realization. When Eric continued, the new information was beginning to get confusing with my limited knowledge of this era, "However, drinking the broth was hazardous to a human. It acted like a slow poison despite granting the longevity and youth, it was slowly killing Igthorn. However, with his longevity, when the industrial age finally came along, he discovered a method to slow the poisonous effects even farther. By injecting it directly into his blood stream." "But that's deadly." Rose said to him. Eric simply shook his head. "Apparently it wasn't so much with that particular blend of juice. Since his scientists eventually discovered that it absorbs into the blood stream anyway, if they filtered out the toxins its effects might stop killing him. In fact, once it was purified, it granted him complete immortality when he had it injected." Eric explained. "How do you know that?" I asked slightly curious and a little surprised. Eric sighed before answering, "My father led the last rebellion against his rule. A survivor told me the story of how my father shot Igthorn in the forehead and he barely flinched."

Trying to wrap my mind around complicated things that were far beyond my knowledge, I simply wound up confusing myself. One thing that stood clear to me though was Igthorn was now immortal and couldn't be killed by conventional means. "Perhaps the best thing to do would be to locate the time stone before he does and send you to a point where you can stop him from seizing control of it." Rose suggested while thinking. "We'd need to locate the time stone first. Besides, we're wanted fugitives now. We wouldn't even be able to get near the city before the guards spray us full of bullets." Eric reminded her. "If there was only a way to travel along the roads without eventually getting spotted by the helicopters." Rose trailed off. A thought then occurred to me, "What if we don't have to use the roads?" I suggested. Being there with me as we gathered up the remains of the gummi bears, Eric understood what I was getting at, "The quick tunnels. We could repair the quick cars and use those for transportation. It's brilliant." Rose stood there slightly confused. "We'll have to take some time and repair some of the tunnels, as well as find out where they go and if any openings had been sealed." Eric added. We finally noticed that Rose was more confused than ever. "We'll explain tomorrow as we begin the project." Eric said to her. "Fine! I'm going to bed then." Rose slightly complained and walked off toward her room.


	9. Chapter 9: Tender shed tears

Chapter 9: Tender shed tears

Eric set me down before bidding me good night. But, tonight still felt lonely to me and I grabbed his left hand with both my paws and stared at the floor while saying to him, just above a whisper, "Stay, please? I still need you." Eric gave me a solemn look that suggested both shock and intrigue. "Still thinking about your loved ones, huh?" He asked me in a soft, smooth tone. Tears once again began streaming down my cheeks as my thoughts turned to all those who protected me and died. Eric once again knelt down and embraced me tightly, my face buried in his shoulder, muffling my sobs. I embraced him back this time trying to wrap my arms around his back but falling short, so I simply gripped at his shirt and held on tightly. I was sorry for using him as a shoulder to cry on all the time, but he never seemed to mind and when I tried to apologize to him for that, he would simply dismiss it and embrace me tighter.

When I was done bawling again, I wiped the tears form my eyes and gazed into his. The bright whitish blue reflected my image back as clear as looking in a still puddle of water. Him staring back deep into mine, almost seeming like he was looking for that one spark of innocence that wasn't tainted by the horrors I've witnessed. Our faces inched closer, our lips met, and sparks of pure bliss were set off in my head. We slowly closed our eyes as we shared a long, enchanting kiss. After around a minute, we slowly broke away from each other, hearts pounding and blood racing. My head felt like it could burst from all of the excitement flashing in there. My heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest and continue kissing him for me. "I've never kissed a gummi bear before." He said to me being coy. "You have a good reason, gummi bears are extinct." I said to him sarcastically and smiling softly to him. He lifted his hand and began stroking the fur on the back of my head. "Not all of them." He reminded me. Our faces were magnetized to each other once again and we shared another passionate kiss together. Life seemed to come to a standstill as the rest of our time together felt like a dream, fleeting and perfect. It all became apparent to me when I awoke the next morning in his room, and in his bed. He was sleeping peacefully on the bed's right side and facing me. Neither of us had any clothes.

I sat up in his bed recalling everything that had transpired that night, his light passionate kisses, his strong hands holding me close, and the warmth of his body. The blissful nature of the experience filled me to the soul as a smile cracked on my face while I turned my gaze to look out of his bedroom window to absorb the warmth of the sun into my furry body. I gazed around the room and located my tunic and his clothes lying on the ground over on the left side of the bed. I remembered how he carried me into the room, still gazing onto my eyes. I envisioned his caresses over my furry arms and how he gently pulled off my belt and tunic, revealing my entire furry body, fully exposed. I had become shaped more like a human female at my age ever since I hit the age of fifteen. I closed my eyes and remembered the feeling of him caressing my body with his strong hands. He sat up and removed his shirt and I was able to see his shaped broad chest and his toned abs. Suddenly, I felt a stir and snapped back to reality as Eric began shifting himself to a sitting position. "Good morning, Eric." I greeted him. He first looked at me with slight shock in his face and then softened up as he recalled last night as well. "Morning... Honey." He teased. "We should get up. We've gotta start working on the quick tunnels today." I suggested, sliding out of the bed and softly placing my feet on the wooden floor.

How long do you suppose it's going to take?" Eric asked me while watching me slip back into my tunic. "I have no idea. It may take anywhere from a few days to a few years. But the only things we need are, one tunnel that leads inside the city, a track that moves both ways and can turn around if need be, and a working quick car. Through a couple thousand years of neglect, we might actually have some tough work on our hands." I answered him. Eric then began slipping back into his clothes while he informed me, "I guess it would help to know that the city was built right on top of Dunwyn Kingdom. In fact, the center tower is known as Dunwyn Tower." I widened my eyes at that kind of news. "If that's any indication, then perhaps there is one tunnel that can help us directly into the city. I just hope it's not in too bad of shape." Once he was finished dressing himself, he walked over to a tall metal box structure with a small round dial on it. The dial had on it numbers that started at zero and increased in intervals of five all the way up to forty five. Eric spun the dial around left and right, left and right, and then pressed his ear against the box as if he was listening to something inside. After a few more times of turning the dial aimlessly, he had gotten completely frustrated. "Aarg, this seemed so much easier in the movies." He complained.

Rose walked up to the door of Eric's room to wake him up to get us to work when she noticed him fidgeting with the steel box. "Why are you trying to get in to my brother's gun case?" She asked him. "That thing has **guns** in it?" I asked with a combination of confusion and surprise.Still figuring out the gun safe, Eric said, "We'll need them inside the glen." Eric explained. Rose simply raised her left eyebrow in slight confusion. "Why? Everything down there is **dead**." "Not the rats." Eric told her. Obviously not liking the idea of running into a pack of rats, Rose walked up to the gun case, moved Eric aside while telling him to "move" and twisted the dial three times and lifted the lever. A clunking sound could be heard from the gun case when the lever was moved horizontally. Then she pulled the door of the case toward her, effectively opening the steel case. "I would have eventually figured it out." Eric pouted. It was rather cute to see him slightly flustered at something so simple. "I'm not waiting twenty years." Rose retorted sarcastically.

Inside the case were around six long barreled guns, that looked like they could be used to hunt down deer or something, and cases of bullets just waiting to be used. "How did you know the combination to your **brother's **gun case anyway?" Eric asked her curiously. She stared at him silently for a little while and finally said, "I plead the fifth on grounds of incrimination." She then plucked three of the guns off of the rack and something that looked like an oil canteen and a brush of sorts and then briskly walked out of the room. "What does that mean?" I asked Eric slightly confused as to what "the fifth" was. He simply shrugged his shoulders and looked back in the direction Rose left in, baffled. "What is she doing, by the way?" I asked referring to the items she took with her. "She's probably going to clean them and test them out to see if they might still work." Eric guessed. I took a better look at the contents of the case. The other three guns had engravings on the wooden back ends of them that read Remington and the number seven with two lowercased "m" letters just after it. "Obviously, Rose's brother was a die-hard deer and elk hunter." Eric deduced. I picked up one of the bullets and marveled at the length of it. The shiny brass reflected my reflection in it and warped the center to look larger that it was. "Is it really necessary to shoot the rats with **this**?" I asked slightly feeling sorry for the rats. Eric simply lifted his right eyebrow at me. "You saw how **big** those things were. Besides, we're out of nine millimeter bullets for the hand guns." He bashfully admitted.

Three minutes later, the low cracking noise of the rifle bullet leaving the barrel rang in the air, and scaring the crap out of both Eric and I. We peaked out of the window as Rose placed the first gun against an outdoor stand, picked up the second rifle and began using a screw driver to take it apart and clean out all of the mechanisms. "She's so quick with that." I exclaimed to Eric. All he could do was stare at Rose in awe and mild fright and lightly nod his head. We watched as she scrubbed the inside of the barrel, and moved on to the rest of the gun so quick we could hardly keep up with her. Granted, I know next to nothing about guns, let alone ever fired on before. She put the rifle back together, loaded a single bullet, aimed it at a far off target and pulled the trigger. The gun made a loud crack noise as the bullet left the barrel and sped across the yard, burying itself into a hay bale with a paper cut out of a large male dear in front.

She then placed that gun back on the outdoor stand and reached down for the last gun. It was slightly different than the other two as it had two barrels side by side. She even loaded different shaped bullets into it after cleaning it. "That's a shot gun!" Eric exclaimed. "I have no idea what the difference is." I stated still flabbergasted at the gun. Rose then pumped the mechanism underneath the two barrels and, just at that moment, a pair of green headed mallard ducks came flying low. She aimed at them and pulled the trigger. The gun seemed to have slightly less of a kick than the other ones as she didn't lean on her right leg as much as the ammunition exited the left barrel and toward the two ducks, spreading out more and more as they flew. The sound of the gun was much deeper in tone than the deer rifles and even had a tinge of hollowness to it. Both of the ducks flinched and fell to the ground below with a deafening "thud". Rose acted like she was surprised at herself and then quickly shrugged her shoulders before briskly walking over and picking up the two mallards. "She must have gotten lucky." Eric stated.

We heard Rose open the front door to the house and call to us, "Get moving you two. Eric, grab the twelve gauge outside before you head to the glen." Sarcastically, I called back to her, "Yes mom!" "I could easily have **you** pluck and clean these ducks, Sunni!" She called back, obviously not liking my retort.


	10. Chapter 10: Conquering shadows

Chapter 10: Conquering shadows

I followed Eric outside to find out what I could do to help. So far, he handed me a case of bullets he called "shells" and told me to hand him two at a time. It was much heavier than it looked and when I peeked inside to see what exactly I was carrying, I found that they literally were like shells. The actual ammunition was packed inside a red plastic tube and sealed off at one end. The other end was capped off with a brass cap that had a series of letters and numbers inscribed in the bottom. He pumped the shot gun's loading mechanism and it made a loud clicking noise indicating that one shell was ready to fire. We then made our way back to the glen to "clean house", as Eric put it. It sounded cool when he said it. He pumped the shot gun and exclaimed, "Let's go clean house!" Then he smiled and said to himself, "I've always wanted to do that." I simply shook my head at the child-like nature of the scene and we started the walk back to the glen.

We had just made it inside the entrance when we immediately found a large group of rats mulling around, some even attacking each other. Eric took aim and fired off a round, striking three of the rats at once and killing them. He pumped the shot gun again and the clicking noise said that the second shell was ready to fire. He quickly aimed and fired the second round at the rest of the scurrying rats and killed two more that were side by side. He then opened the gun, pulled out the two empty shells and dropped them onto the ground. I tried reaching down and picking them up until Eric stopped me, "Don't touch them now. They're hot." Figuring that it might be best to pick them up on our return trip than burn myself being nit-picky, I simply let them lie there and handed him two more shells.

We spent the better part of the day simply blasting away giant rats. At one point, we passed the glen's library and I suddenly became nostalgic again, and couldn't help but walked in and look around. I pictured Zummi standing in front of the pedestal that normally held the great book, reading and memorizing a different array of spells. Zummi would turn around after sensing our approach and notice us. "Hi, Sunni." He would greet me. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your new friend?" When the daydream faded, the pedestal was bare, except for layers of dust, and Zummi was back in his grave. Tears began to fall from my eyes once more and I paid a moment of silence to Zummi's memory before moving on. I did the same when passing by each place I remembered each of my fellow gummi's. We finally reached the quick tunnels and we were pretty sure that any rats we didn't kill had fled in fear. "Should we head back?" Eric asked me. I thought about it and realized that there was one more place I needed to see before we left. "Not yet. Follow me." I said to him and walked off back in the direction of the glen. Slightly confused, Eric followed close behind.

We finally came upon the only door that hadn't been opened in the whole glen. I stood there in front of it for a time simply letting the thoughts race through my skull. Eric stood there with me simply watching me debate with myself. When I finally built up the courage, I reached for the door handle and pulled it open. Old, familiar decorations surrounded me when I walked in. My old hand carved bed, the closet full of dresses and outfits given to me by Grammi, The gorgeous hand carved vanity set painted by Gruffi the day I rapidly lost my youth from a curse placed on me by Madam Bane. It was all there, caked with dust, but still in great condition, none-the-less. Luckily I got all of my youth back. A night stand sat against the bed with a completely melted candle on top of it, its wax clumped around the base of the candle.

Eric walked into the room along with me and simply looked around and marveled at its interior decorations. After looking around somewhat, he turned his attention to me and noticed that I had walked up to the bed and just stood there staring at it nostalgically, recalling the years of my childhood that I've spent growing up here. "Was this your room?" Eric asked. I just nodded, silent from all of the nostalgia. He quietly walked up to me and placed his right hand on my left shoulder and I tilted my head to nuzzle against it momentarily. A few tears streamed down my cheeks as my memories flooded through my mind.

After a few silent moments, we made our way back out toward the house, picking up the shot gun shells as we walked. We eventually made it to the main entry way of the glen when we noticed another figure standing in its midst. A familiar figure and at the same time I didn't recognize it. It was a gummi bear. She was exactly my height and fur color. The hair on the top of her head was fairly long and she kept it spiked backward. She wore and oversized black leather jacket, a white tank top shirt that was form fitting and somehow made her chest seem slightly larger, blue jeans with a chain belt that wraped three times around her waist, and heeled black boots. She was simply looking around curiously and aimlessly as if she had never been in the glen in her life.

She eventually looked over at the two of us and grinned at the sight of me. "Hey there 'big sis', what took you so long?" She asked with a voice slightly higher than mine but strikingly similar. Her expression was that of mischief. "Who are you?" I asked still shocked to see another gummi bear. "I am X1505. But you can call me Luna." She answered. "X1505?" I asked, even more confused now. "That's a serial number! She's your clone!" Eric exclaimed his eyes wide from the shock. "What's that?" I asked still confused. "It's a living copy created through breakthrough science. You can thank Dr. Lavender for this meeting." Luna then mocked at me. "So technically, I'm your daughter and your sister ant the same time." She grinned slightly mischievously at me as she bowed while introducing herself. "You should come with me now. 'Daddy' wants you to come home." "Daddy?" I asked raising my right eyebrow in confusion. "Isaac Lavender, of course. He created me from **your **fur and blood. That makes you both my mother and sister and that makes **him** my daddy."

It was my turn to widen my eyes at the shock. She then reached down and unwrapped the chain from around her waist and dangled it in her hands. There was a knife attached to one end of the chain and she dangled it from the chain in her left hand. She suddenly began spinning the chain around. The knife spun at the end of the chain faster and faster, soon it was spinning too fast to see clearly. "So, are you going to come quietly? Cause I don't wanna hurt you." Eric then stepped in front to try and protect me. He aimed his shot gun at Luna and pumped the mechanism to load the shell. "Don't!" I called to Eric. Seeing an opportunity, Luna thrust her left arm forward and hurled the knife at Eric's stomach. Seeing Eric in danger, I lunged forward and tackled him to the ground. Searing pain shot through my body as the knife was slightly off target and dug itself into my right shoulder. I gripped my shoulder, just underneath the knife, and dropped down to my knees, gritting my teeth to keep from crying out loudly. Tears of pain escaped from my tightly closed eyes as the pain began localizing itself. "Mom!" Luna screamed while Eric called, "Sunni!" Luna was the first to reach me, followed shortly by Eric who aimed the shot gun at her once again. "Get away from her." He demanded. "No, put the gun down." I said, trying to ignore the pain in my shoulder. "I don't understand. Why did you do that?" Luna asked placing her paw gently onto the back of my shoulder. "I... won't lose another... loved one." I answered. "I can't... let him kill... you either. After all... you... are the first gummi bear I've... been able to see since... I arrived here." I finished while cringing in pain from my wound. My blood was beginning to stain the majority of my arm now, so Eric pulled off his shirt and tore off pieces to tie a tourniquet. He then slid the knife gently out of my shoulder to avoid causing any more harm to me. The pain was even fiercer than when the knife plunged into me. Searing pain that could light fires shot through my entire body and I began gritting teeth to deal with it. Eric bundled up the rest of his shirt and stuffed it into my mouth to keep me from cracking any teeth. Once the knife was completely out, he quickly wrapped the wound to attempt to cut off the bleeding.

Luna simply watched as Eric took care of my wound, frozen with both fear and confusion. Fear from the amount of muffled screaming that came from behind my tightly clenched teeth and confusion from the act of sacrifice I made to protect them both. She then suddenly tilted her head downward in what seemed to be shame and simply said, "Fine, but I'll be watching you. And the moment I see you alone. I'll be taking you to 'daddy'!" And with that, she turned around, climbed back up the tunnel and disappeared.


	11. Chapter 11: Crimson rain

Chapter 11: Crimson rain

She vanished from view and left us alone with my shoulder burning in pain. I had seen enough blood in my life recently to recognize the color of the life giving liquid and not be sickened by it. But still, it had not been my own until now and the burning sensation in my shoulder intensified as Eric pressed the palms of his hands against the deep wound. He proceeded to stop the bleeding using his shirt which slowly began staining red as a result of the blood soaking into the fabric. The pain was intense enough to cause tears to well up in my eyes as I shut them tightly. His hands stained with my blood, Eric looked around for items and tools to use as a gurney in order to bring me back to the surface. It wasn't long before he fashioned a carrier out of rope, two boards and a bed sheet and hauled me back up the tunnel.

He took me into the house to get the wound sewed back up. He called to Rose as he burst through the front door, "Rose, get some iodine and something to stitch together a wound." Rose came to see what all of the commotion was about only to see me holding onto my shoulder in pain and seeing that the makeshift tourniquet soaked in crimson blood. "Oh my gosh! What happened?" She gasped before dashing around to fetch a rag and the iodine. "I'll tell you later. We have to get her sewn up." Eric began raising his voice with worry. They began mending my wound as the pain intensified during sterilization and even when Rose pierced the hot needle through my skin to sew it up. My screams of pain rang through the forest loud enough I was nearly afraid of alerting Igthorn to our location.

It was over in an instant. Even though the pain lingered, the procedure was over before I even knew it. Eric then picked me up and carried me over to my room to allow me rest and let the wound heal. "You didn't need to do that for me, you know." He solemnly said to me while hovering himself above my face. "Like I said to Luna, 'I'm not gonna lose another loved one." I weakly said to him. He knelt down and kissed be before saying, "If only I was a gummi bear." All I could do was smile at the notion before I fell asleep from weakness. Eric then made his way back toward Rose to relax himself. "You know you can't keep her, right? Once she has the time stone back, she needs to return to her own time without you." It was the hard truth, but she felt that he needed to hear it. "You are going to have to help repair the quick tunnels. And from now in one of us needs to stay behind and guard Sunni." Eric demanded ignoring Rose's advice. "What are you talking about?" Rose asked slightly confused and insulted that she was ignored. Eric then began recounting the incident. Rose listened intently to the story and realized in her own mind what had been going on. "He must have been at this secretly ever since we acquired her." She said more to herself than to Eric. "But, isn't cloning technology illegal?" Eric asked with concern. "Yes, it is. Ever since Igthorn used it to create an army of himself to destroy Mousehiger and one of them went rogue and killed his love, Lady Bane." Rose answered. "You worked for Igthorn, did they ever actually eliminate all of the clones?" Eric asked adding on to his earlier statements. "Igthorn killed them all himself. Clones are instinctively drawn to their originals, effectively acting like a homing beacon. So, it makes sense for Dr. Lavender to use a clone to retrieve Sunni and how this 'Luna' found her so fast." Rose answered in a way that sounded like she was making an educated study of them. Eric backed away from the woman slightly scared and mildly informed. "I'm hungry, he said and then moved in to the kitchen to see if the ducks were finished cooking. Mildly insulted, Rose simply huffed and crossed her arms in frustration.

While unconscious, I dreamed of my old life in the glen. I was posing for Gusto's new sculpture and he finally came up with the idea of sketching a blueprint on paper rather than chiseling the sculpture with me standing in front of him forever. After six perspective views of the pose he had come up with, I stepped down from my perch and reviewed his drawings with him. Suddenly, as I viewed his drawings, the paper mysteriously began to burn away, and Gusto barely noticed it even happening. The flames spread from the paper and onto his paw, burning away at his fur and flesh. Still not even showing any signs of pain. When I tried to warn him of the flames, no sound exited my mouth and Gusto simply tried to ask what I had said to him. It was far too late now to warn him of any impending doom, the flames spread and engulfed him completely, leaving a charred skeleton in its place. The skeleton glanced at me and began moving its lower jaw to speak, "Sunni. Come back. We need you." The moment the words had finished exiting his mouth, the skeleton then fell to dust at my feet and the weather turned dark. In a few moments, it had begun to rain, not water drops, but drops of blood that stained my fur as it fell. The blood rain continued to pour down harder and harder and I ran back toward the glen to keep from having my fur turned deep red. The strange thing was, the moment I reached the entrance, the ground gave out from under me and I fell for around six feet and landed in the courtyard of Drekmore, surrounded by Ogres. The Ogres began laughing at me and continued to laugh until the Igthorn I recognized from my era stepped through the crowd of Ogres and silenced them in order to speak to me. "Welcome to Drekmore, my crimson little friend." He greeted me. I stood in a defensive pose, ready to defend myself if need be. "I must thank you for helping me with the discovery and location of the Time Stone, Mrs. Lohengrin." I tried to say that he could "go rot in a hole" for all I cared, but the words that I said were, "It's a pleasure to serve you Duke Igthorn. Now about my payment?" Igthorn simply smiled and motioned to the Ogres. Two of them then took me by the paws and began hauling me into the castle. After a short jaunt into the castle, they proceeded to toss me into a dungeon. However, the moment they released me and gave me a toss, I shot awake with a fright. I screamed aloud from the nightmare and Eric ran into the room as fast as he could. "Sunni? What happened? Was it Luna?" He asked defensively. I calmed myself down a bit before flopping back down onto the pillow and shaking my head to answer his question. Still tired from all of my screaming and loss of blood, I fell back into a deep sleep before anyone could ask any more questions.

I found myself still in my room when I awoke three hours later, with my head still spinning and with Eric sleeping in a chair in the far right side of the room. It seemed like the opportune moment for a snappy comment, "If things like this keep happening, we'll never get the tunnels finished." I muttered in a groggy voice. His head shot up the moment the word, "never" escaped my lips. "Sunny! You're awake. How are you feeling?" The words spilled out of his mouth as if he had been waiting for me to awaken for days. "I made an attempt to move a little but my strength failed me and my shoulder began to burn once more. Just as I flopped back down to the pillow, my stomach grumbled loudly. Eric had placed his hand on my good shoulder in order to encourage me to lie still when the grumbling noise caught his attention. We both began to laugh and he finally stood up and said to me, "I'll go and get you some soup that Rose cooked up. You just lie back and watch some TV." Slightly confused I perked up my right eyebrow and asked, "T... V?" Eric stopped to answer my question the best he could, "It's a device that broadcasts a picture from somewhere else." He soon gave up and showed me a mysterious box with a glass screen in the front of it. He then picked up a small flat device with a variety of buttons on it and pushed one of them. Suddenly the glass screen lit up and there was a moving picture on the inside of the box. Humans wearing vintage western outfits were shooting at each other and riding on horses. A bugle could be heard in the background and strangely more music accompanied the scene. At first I was quite startled until Eric brushed the concept off as normality and simply said, "There we go, an old western movie. Think of it as watching the contents of a movie play out in front of your eyes." And with that, he left the room briefly to fetch the soup.

Eric was right. It really **was** like watching a story book come to life temporarily. I was mesmerized by the pictures moving and telling the story as if it happened in real life at that very moment. The movie had action, suspense, and even romance rolled up in it. I was thoroughly intrigued by it.

Five minutes later, Eric came back in with a warm bowl of soup in his hands. He knelt down and turned a small knob on the "TV" and the sound grew quieter and quieter until it was barely audible. He then placed the bowl down beside the TV, and came over to lift me up enough to rest my back against the headboard of the bed. He then fetched the bowl, sat himself down beside me and proceeded to gently feed me the soup just like he did when we first met.


	12. Chapter 12: Captured

Chapter 12: Captured

A month later, Luna spied on us from her perch in a tree just above the gummi berry patch. She watched as the three of us traveled to the glen and worked on repairing the quick tunnels to infiltrate Dunwyn City. My words continuing to ring in her head, "I won't lose another loved one. I won't let him kill you either." It began driving her insane, thinking about it. "Stupid. Why risk your life for others? It just doesn't make sense." She thought silently to herself, shaking her head from side to side to try and throw the thoughts from her head. Unable to shake away her thoughts, she decided to formulate a plan to try and take me away. She jabbed the knife she kept with her deep into the tree trunk and used the chain that was attached to it to swing from the tree and closer to the ground. The moment her feet pressed against the tree trunk, the knife gave way and slipped out of it. Gravity caught up with her and she plummeted around two feet to the soil below. "Ow!" She mumbled to herself as she stood back up, rubbing her butt with her right paw.

She thought of how to take me away as she attempted to rub away the shooting pain from her "landing". "I need to get inside the house first." She thought to herself. "If I wait for her in her room, perhaps I can get a drop on her." Suddenly, my words rang through her skull once more. "I won't lose another loved one." Her mind wandered with more questions, "What **is** a loved one? What is **love**?" She asked herself. "Maybe I can get answers from daddy once I've brought Sunni back." Suddenly she heard a loud clicking noise from behind her as if something was being forced into place. Luna turned around to come face to face with the double barrel of Rose's shotgun. "Give me a reason to pull this trigger." Rose threatened. Luna simply gulped and dropped her knife and chain before raising her paws up into the air to indicate her surrender.

Rose then pressed the barrel of the gun closer toward Luna and stated, "In the house **now**!" Luna kept her hands up and did as she was told, her forehead slightly sweating with a kind of fear. As she led the gummi bear clone inside the house, Rose made sure to pick up the knife and chain weapon that was lying on the ground before entering the house herself.

By the time it was time for us to return home, we had completed around another ten percent of the track we needed to travel to the city and back. The both of us were tired and sweaty and weren't ready for the scene we saw the moment we walked through the front door. Luna was tied up and sat down on the living room couch answering Rose's questions. "Luna?" I said in pure shock. She looked over in my direction with a slightly saddened expression but she didn't look tortured or hurt in the slightest. "Save me mom. She is scary!" Luna whined in my direction. I was extremely confused at that point. So confused that my mind simply fell blank and I nearly fainted where I stood. "How did you catch her?" Eric asked, snapping me back to reality before I could actually lose consciousness. "Let's just say that she isn't the most **trained** spy I've ever seen." She said to him. Luna became flustered and raised her voice saying, "I just want to take her back to..." Rose interrupted her, "I can't let you take Sunni to that madman." Rather than getting angry that the woman insulted her "father", Luna actually became confused. "Madman? What do you mean by that?" I decided to interrupt and ask her, "How did he treat you when you first woke up?" Luna's eyes opened wide with the memory of her brief encounter with Dr. Lavender.

A bright light appears before her pained eyes as she awakens for the first time. A muffled voice with an excited tone cackled aloud, the sound ringing in her ears, "He, he, he! You may not be a real gummi bear, but even an abomination can be useful I guess. If you bring your original sister to me, I may consider increasing your lifespan. Perhaps her DNA can even make you into a true gummi bear." The images she saw were simple blurry shapes, her eyes in pain from adjusting to the light for the first time. She opened her mouth to make a sound, "Who..." She choked, her voice straining form its first use. Not knowing where she was or how she got there, and barely knowing **who** she even was, she attempted speak once again, "Who are you?" She noticed that her voice was muffled and when her eyes finally adjusted to the bright light in front of her, she noticed that she was floating in a transparent blue liquid with a breathing mask over her face. She was simply floating in a tube with nothing but her fur on. Innocent in the ways of the world that she had come to, she paid no attention to her "indecency" but simply focused on the older man staring at her. "You may refer to me as your creator, or your father, if you prefer. Something about that word meant something to her. Upon hearing it, her heart somewhat leapt with a kind of joy, and she began feeling as if the belonged somewhere. She had someone to teach her things about this world she lived in and perhaps she could find out more. Her curiosity reached farther than the sky and she wanted to learn it all.

However, the next few days couldn't go farther from her plans. Rather than him taking her places and teaching her things, like she had hoped, He kept her trapped in the tube of liquid and stuck her in the arms and legs with various needles. She began feeling stronger with every injection, but she continued to feel the emptiness and loneliness of the neglect. She just wanted to get out of the tube and wander around. Finally, a wish of hers came true. One day, just as she was awakening from sleep, something around her began to change. The liquid that kept her suspended began to drain out of the bottom. Her body lowered itself until inevitably, her feet rested smoothly on the ground. Feeling herself stand for the first time, she wasn't expecting her legs to fold so easily as the remainder of the water drained away. Her knees, not used to supporting even her light weight, bent and she found herself lowering to the ground along with the liquid. Finally seeing her exact color for the first time, she was intrigued at how bright she looked out of the dimming liquid. Still wet and with her fur pressed tightly against her flesh, she placed her front paws against the ground to try her hand at standing up. Slowly, she struggled and pushed herself upright. Placing one foot under her waning body, she reached out and pressed her right paw against the glass of the tube that held her and attempted to pull herself into a standing position. Her knees and ankles quickly finding the strength to support her body weight, she took her paw off of the glass and allowed herself to stand there for a few minutes, literally feeling herself become stronger just by standing. Then a thought occurred to her, "What about **walking**?" She then placed her right paw back on the glass and began to take her first step toward the left. She felt herself stumble and caught her balance by placing her left paw on the glass in front of her body. Leaning against the glass she then began taking steps in the same direction while supporting herself. It was pretty much no time before she was walking without supporting herself and her steps were even becoming much smoother and less clunky. In ten minutes she was practicing jogging in place. And even opening and closing her fists and moving her arms around. She was kind of sore from the new use of her muscles and even the injections, but she refused to complain.

Suddenly, the glass tube began rotating and lowering all on its own. It was only ten seconds till the tube lowered itself down to the level of the drain and she finally stepped out and slipped off her breathing mask. At first, she thought that her dreams were coming true and that she could go out and learn everything she could. That was until a door on the far side of the empty laboratory slid open and Dr. Lavender proceeded to walk toward the young Luna. She saw the old man come closer and closer and she stood ready for him to kneel down and offer his hand for her to take. They would have fun, her learning to play many games and him teaching her the important things the world had to offer. It wasn't so, the moment he got close enough, he stopped short and simply stared at her like he believed that she was a disappointment or something and finally blurted out, "You took much longer to learn to walk than I predicted, X fifteen-oh-five. Suddenly, the feeling of both betrayal and guilt flooded through her. Then he added, "However, it took the last of my resources to create you. And I could always use your homing abilities to locate the creature you originally came from." Confused, Luna tried to talk to him to ask him to clarify his words, but he simply turned away from her and ordered her, "Get yourself fitted with some close and get moving. I need you to bring your original back to me. And don't fail me. I made you and I know how to turn you back into a pile of slag."


	13. Chapter 13: Panic inspiration

Chapter 13: Panic inspiration

Panic set into Luna's mind as she flashed back to her present day. She began struggling against her bonds to free herself, screaming with sheer fright and flashed back to the rest of her memory. Before she had a chance to leave for her mission, she took a glance into some of the nearby glass tanks similar to her own and noticed what he meant by "a pile of slag". The liquid of the tank had been drained out and on the floor of the tank lie a pile of what looked like green goo and fur. She looked around for something to help her identify the creature inside and eventually found a label. She read the label on the tank aloud, "Gummi bear clone experiment number X fifteen-oh-four." She shifted her eyes between the goo and the label until she found a nearby monitor that read, "Failure. Reduction process: one hundred percent." 'Oh, God!' She thought to herself. "That used to be like me?" Her eyes wide with fear to what she could become if she fails.

The image of the melted gummi bear clone continued to haunt her very being, driving her nearly into insanity. She continued to struggle as Eric and I tried to hold her down to keep her from hurting herself. Rose dashed off of the nearby chair and into her bedroom. She quickly came back out with a syringe and stuck it in just underneath her left shoulder. Luna tensed up slightly and suddenly felt relaxed enough to fall asleep. "What was that all about?" I asked extremely confused as to what made her panic so violently. Rose placed her right hand against her chin for a few seconds and finally said, "I don't know. But I know how we can find out." She left in a hurry and came back in a mere twenty minutes lugging a large rectangular machine that resembled one of the computers back at the laboratory and had a round circular ribbon with wires connecting it to the monitor. "Eric, help me with this, it's much heavier than I anticipated." Rose called to him. Eric then got up and moved quickly to assist her with the heaviest part of the device. "You brought your dreamscape probe?" Eric asked with slight surprise and disgust. "What?" Rose shot back at his tone of voice, "You'll never know when it could be useful." "Or sentimental." Eric mumbled under his voice. Rose, obviously understanding what Eric said, lowered her eyebrows and retorted, "I heard that!"

While Luna was still sedated, Rose placed the head band of the dreamscape probe around her head and flipped the switch on the monitor into an upward position. The monitor's screen lit up with a bright blue light and images began appearing as if watching the television that was in my room, only fuzzy and there was no noise at first. Rose reached around the right side of the monitor and turned a few knobs, one clarified the picture and the other adjusted the static coming from the image, making it better to see. She then adjusted a knob on the left side of the monitor and that adjusted the volume of the sound. Soon we could see exactly what she was dreaming about that made her panic. The horrid images that moved across the screen sickened me to my stomach and we finally understood why she was so desperate to acquire me.

The moment the melted pile of slag appeared in front of the screen, I felt like I had to hurl and I made a mad dash for the closest restroom. Rose continued watching, appalled at the crude method used by her husband. "How can you discard a living creature like that Isaac?" She said aloud, mostly to herself. "It's just cruel. She is so afraid of turning into that, she is willing to just take Sunni away and do what he says." Eric sadly stated. "Perhaps there is a way to make her immune to the reduction process. But, to figure it out I have to find out what Isaac's using to reduce them." Rose admitted. "If she was immune to the reduction process, perhaps she would have nothing to fear." Eric caught on to her theory. "There are only two problems, though." Rose added to her original statement. Eric's tone changed to worry mixed with confusion, "And those are?" "I need to take a sample of one of these reduced clones and thus need to locate and infiltrate Isaac's secret lab." Rose informed him. "And the second thing?" Eric asked slightly afraid of what it might be. "If we **do** collect a sample and he's using an acid based reduction method, which it actually looks like it might be, then there isn't anything I can do to make her immune." Rose finished. Eric was slightly confused and had to ask even though he was mostly afraid of the answer, "Why, what's so different about an acid based reduction method?" "You're kidding me, right?" Rose asked as if it should have been obvious. You work with machinery and can't figure out how an acid based reduction method works?" Eric stopped to think about the way it sounded for a short minute when it hit him. Rose could tell that he may have gotten the message by her hint but needed to know for sure. "That's right. It literally is injecting the subject clone with an acid and just letting it dissolve them alive." Rose answered. Eric found himself speechless to the sickening news he just heard. "Eventually all that is left is..." Rose broke her sentence and turned her gaze back to the screen showing the pile of gelatin. She then solemnly and with great disgust ended her sentence, "...this." Suddenly Eric felt his anger slightly boil up, "And you actually **used** this method before? I thought cloning was illegal?" "It is." Rose snapped back at him. "There are more things that get reduced other than clones you know. It was developed as a death penalty for some of the worst criminals. There are three reduction methods known. One is by acid injection, which I had just described. The second is by a specific radioactive bar. It's a type of radioactive chemical that breaks down any cell it touches other than rubber. It's even known to disintegrate steel. It was deemed one the cruelest method of reduction as the host's remains are radioactive and dangerous long after the process has been completed. With this method, not even a drop of blood is left eventually. The third and final method is the common reduction of corpses. The host is dropped into a batch of reducer chemicals and bones are then buried. This was the most humane method of reduction as the reduction chemicals then absorb the nutrients from the body and becomes a light blue gel that is now used as a powerful, but expensive, fertilizer." Rose explained. She switched off the dreamscape probe and slid the head band off of Luna's head easily. She then asked Eric, "Do you think you can carry this into my room. I'll place it somewhere later." Eric didn't say anything, but did as he was told. He picked up the machine with ease, lugged it into Rose's room and gently placed it onto her bed. He came out at the same time I walked back from the restroom. I turned my gaze to him, noticing his dismal expression. "What's wrong?" I asked feeling slightly dumb because of the horrid images that we had just witnessed. He looked back at me and solemnly answered, "It's nothing", obviously trying to hide some truly disturbing news from me.

I gave in to temptation and buried by face into his stomach to try and help cheer him up. In my mind I thought, 'Poor Luna. She was just born into this world and now threatened with death by the man who created her.' Eric returned with an embrace feeling sorry for his adversary and sickening hatred for the man responsible for it all. "I won't let anyone hurt you, ever again." Eric quietly said to me. I always felt safe in his embrace, but now I was more worried about my sister clone than my own safety. I had to find a way of convincing her of joining us. But, it may as well prove easer to say than to do.


	14. Chapter 14: Bad sacrifice

Chapter 14: Bad sacrifice

By morning, Luna had awoken from the sedatives and Rose decided to feed her breakfast to try and get her accustomed to being treated with kindness. I awoke to the smell of scrambled eggs and bacon and fresh brewed herbal tea and coffee. I followed the scent of the meal, feeling hungry myself, all the way to the living room. I entered the kitchen and made my way to the refrigerator and fetched myself a glass of milk. After drinking it all up, I whipped my mouth of the excess and met Luna in the living room where Luna was being hand-fed by Rose. She was being surprisingly cooperative and simply ate up the eggs and bacon, acting like she was cherishing every bite. She caught a glimpse of me from the corner of her eye and turned her attention to me. "Hey mom, these eggs are delicious. You should try some!" She said to me with enthusiasm and wonder in her voice. I was completely surprised by her reactions. It was as if she had never tasted this kind of food before. "I already have." I hesitantly said to her. "And you can stop calling me 'mom' I'm only eighteen." I then added. Luna seemed slightly disappointed until I suggested, "I don't mind 'sister' though." She perked up with a smile and responded, "Ok, sis!"

I then heard Eric enter the room still half asleep. His face looked like it could concave in on itself, he looked so bad. His hair was messed up and he even hung himself with very little strength. "Rough night?" I asked him, lightly worried. He slowly nodded his head in confirmation. "I kept waking up last night thinking that she had gotten loose and was going to kill us in our sleep." He groggily stated, turning his gaze at Luna. I simply rolled my eyes at how silly this was becoming and assured him, "She wouldn't kill you in your sleep. I'm her target after all. She'd probably just snatch me and run." He shifted his gaze to me as I spoke and shifted his gaze back to Luna, who was giving him an innocent angel look while chewing on a mouthful of eggs. He turned back and headed to the shower to refresh himself after failing to process the events that just occurred. "Wow! You really are a direct copy of me. Same charisma." I blurted out, surprised. She simply smiled at me while continuing to chew on her food.

She finished her meal and Rose then taught both Luna and I to cook for ourselves. I wound up cooking myself eggs and breakfast sausages. Of course Luna had some of my sausages and she enjoyed the taste of them. Throughout the rest of the day, she accompanied us into the glen. There she began asking me questions about it, such as, "So is this where you used to live?", "Which one of these was your room?", and "How many other gummi bears lived here?" Most of her questions were hard to answer, like, "So what happened to the rest of them?" She almost caused me to break down one again, but I had to keep it together. Finally, we made it to the quick tunnels and she was completely blown away from all of the work we had accomplished. Rather than the original look of the tunnels, the rails had been covered with a metal lining as well as the quick cars had been equipped with small wheels to decrease tension and increase speed. The brake of the car had also been reinforced for precautions and the car was also given a small electric engine so it could literally propel itself along the tracks. It was powered by energy collected from Rose's power cell. While Luna was still amazed, she felt as if she had forgotten something. Suddenly the image of the melted clone quickly flashed before her in her mind and she suddenly became afraid once more. However, she was now at war with herself, 'These people have been so nice to me and daddy has been so mean, but I don't wanna get turned into a pile of slag. What should I do?' She fought with herself for two hours while Eric and I continued working on the tunnel paths. The area just ahead of us had completely collapsed and Eric searched around for supplies that he could use to build a support sturdy enough to support the great speeds.

As she continued to debate with herself, a shadow crept up behind her and a frightening familiar voice spoke out, "Ho, ho! So this is Gummi Glen?" Dr. Lavender stated excitedly. Luna shot herself around to look at the owner of the scary voice and screamed the moment she saw his face. We also shot around the moment we heard her scream out like that. I noticed that he had a syringe in his lab coat pocket of what looked like some kind of goldish-green liquid. He pulled it out, holding it in his right hand and said to the little clone, "Thank you for leading me to her. Your purpose here is done." Luna's eyes widened and her pupils shrank in fear. She then began trying to use her legs to slide herself backward away from the insane doctor, his sinister grin saying that he was going to inject her with whatever that was, and that it was going to kill her. "Luna!" I yelled and ran as fast as I could to try and save her from him. I was almost too late as her reared the hand that held the syringe and lunged it at her. She rolled away to dodge and he missed completely. "Sit still you little..." Before he could finish his sentence, I tackled him at the side, causing him to drop the syringe and allowing it to shatter on the ground of the quick tunnels. The goldish-green liquid splashed on the ground and began eating away at the stone ground. "An acid based reduction process!" Eric called out in surprise. "You stupid creature! Do you know what would have happened if that had splashed on you?" Isaac yelled at me and grabbed me by the collar of the tunic. "Sunni!" Eric yelled and tried to proceed to charging at the mad scientist. "Hold it right there!" He demanded, snatching a scalpel from the same lab coat pocket that held the syringe. "Don't move or we'll all see what color her blood is right here, right now." He gave a curious grin from ear to ear as he made his demands, as if it wouldn't bother him to dissect me right now. Of course, Eric stopped in his tracks and began worrying for my ultimate safety.

"How did you find us, anyway?" I asked struggling to keep the blade of the scalpel from slashing my throat. "An interesting little detail that I'll gladly clear up for you." He cackled. "On the back of that abomination's jacket collar happens to be a micro transmitter. I simply followed it the moment her movements stopped for long enough to be considered at least stalking you, and here I am! Now, I'll be taking her back to my laboratory and none of you will follow or pursue. It doesn't matter anyway. She'll be dissected by tomorrow and both Igthorn and I'll both have what we want." He cackled insanely. "What do you mean by that?" Eric demanded his question to be answered. Isaac simply smiled harder, his eyebrows lowering to match his level of insanity. "You mean you don't know? Igthorn knows of your existence and set up a search and destroy party to eliminate you once and for all. In fact, they already know where you are! Before I entered the glen, I transmitted your coordinates anonymously! He wants you **dead**! But I can't have them simply drop a two thousand pound bomb on you now can I? So I'll be taking you away, they will be erased from existence and now since the failed experiment had survived, they'll believe that her body will be yours! And I'll be long gone with you in tow. You'll be my greatest discovery yet. Once I dissect you, you will be dead! And I can poke around and study you as much as I want!"

"You talk too much Isaac!" Rose suddenly said from behind him. Dr. Lavender turned around just to have a shovel smash him in the face, hard. The force caused him to drop me to the ground as well as his scalpel and I scrambled to get away from the madman. Isaac stumbled backward and grasped his now broken nose in agony and furious anger. "You **bitch**!" He exclaimed and then reached down to his left hip with his left hand, drew a nine millimeter handgun from a holster under his lab coat and aimed it at Rose. He then proceeded to shout at her, "I will not be denied the knowledge. I will complete my research!" As he finished his little rant, he pulled the trigger of the gun, firing a bullet at her. The bullet struck her in the right shoulder and she was thrown into a spiral from the impact. Rose impacted with the ground on her left side and began screaming in pain from the wound. In the meantime, Luna, who was still tied up for our safety, found a means of freeing herself by locating a piece of metal lying on the ground and rubbing it against the ropes until they snapped. She then proceeded to stand up to run away from the insane doctor and the fight until something in her very being stopped her from doing so. It was a strange feeling, like something that she had longed for in something completely different.

Isaac aimed the gun at me, "You'll still be coming with me gummi bear. Get over here now!" He ordered. I didn't budge. He then relaxed his expression, "He, he, he! That's right. I'm pushing the wrong pressure points." And before anyone could even think, he quickly aimed the gun at Eric and pulled the trigger. The bullet that exited the barrel of the gun struck him in the upper right leg and he collapsed to the ground gripping it. "**Eric**!" I gasped. I started to run to him to aid in his wounds until, Dr. Lavender shouted, "**Enough**! Either you come with me, or you can say 'good by' to your human companion. Quite frankly this relationship is an abomination in itself." "How did you..." I started to ask until he interrupted me, "Again, I, in my limitless knowledge, picked up on the way you two looked at each other and worried about each other as you were held captive in my grip. It's disgusting. You, such a marvelous creature, pairing up with a lowly human commoner. Now if you don't come with me, he **dies**!" His voice continued to become more and more irate as he spoke.


	15. Chapter 15: Limited escape

Chapter 15: Limited escape

"With only ten minutes, I estimate, to get clean away, I suppose I should incapacitate..." He broke his sentence when his target was nowhere in sight. "Where did X fifteen-zero-five disappear to?" Suddenly he felt a sharp cutting pain in his left thigh and he collapsed to the ground on to his left knee. He turned around to assess the wound inflicted upon him and noticed that it was a stab wound from a knife. In a split second, the knife revealed itself. It was a basic double bladed knife with a long chain attached to the end of it and Luna was spinning it by the chain with a determined look on her face, rather than blatant fear. "Ten minutes, huh? Then I guess we'd better get moving. Sunni, get them to the quick car." She sounded more forceful and confident than usual as she spoke. "But' it's not complete yet. It's a thirty second ride than it just drops off." I informed her. "Should it matter? You'll get blown up if you stay here. You'd have a better chance with the quick tunnels." She called back to me. "What about you?" I asked hoping that she wouldn't try and sacrifice herself to stall him. "We only have one operational quick car." I informed her. "Don't worry about me. I'm a pretty fast runner." She reassured me. With little options left to me, I worked to get both Rose and Eric inside the quick car. During this time, Isaac, could hear her plan and aimed the gun in his hand at Luna and fired twice. One bullet ricocheted off of some nearby rocks and the second grazed Luna's left arm.

Luna proved that she could back up her boasting by sprinting around and diverting Lavender's attention, causing him to waist his ammunition. She ran circles around him taunting him, "What's the matter 'daddy'? Can't walk anymore since I severed a vital tenant in your leg?" Isaac continued firing at her screaming wildly, "**Damn you**! **Is this how you treat your creator**?" It was a matter of minutes when I had gotten both Rose and Eric in the back seats of the quick car and said to both of them, "Hang on and duck your heads!" Then I decided to call to Luna to ensure that I never left her behind, "Luna, we're ready. Get on!" She turned her head for a mere second when Isaac fired the gun at her once more. This time the bullet struck her in the left kidney and she was flung to the ground. I gasped in fear and panic, thinking that my distraction had killed her until she slowly picked herself up. Both Eric and Rose used bits of their clothing to stop the bleeding of their own wounds and I figured that I had only minutes to grab her and get away.

Still determined to have me, Isaac used his hands and his good leg to crawl toward us, his sinister smile ever present. Panting heavily, Luna picked herself to her feet and swung her chain once more. The pain in her side felt like it was burning in flames, but she withstood it as much as she could. She knife on the chain she spun faster and faster until she flung the entire thing at him, releasing even the chain as the weapon flew at its target. The knife traveled through the air until I lodged itself in the right shoulder of Isaac Lavender. The wound was deep enough to limit the use of the damaged arm and he collapsed onto his face. I raced to grab Luna by the right paw and hurried back to the quick car. I placed her in the seat with Rose realizing that she could treat the wound and released the brake the moment I hopped into the front seat. The quick car sped off in a hurry, faster than it had ever traveled before and we had vanished from Isaac's view seconds before a pair of flying machines released a couple of devices that looked somewhat like elongated containers. The moment the containers struck the ground near the tree there was a massive explosion from each. This caused the entire glen to collapse in on itself. The debris inevitably collapsed on top of Isaac and all we could hear was a loud thud after his frightened screams. The explosion's force detonated the power cell that was powering the house and that caused another explosion so massive that the quick tunnels behind us began collapsing completely as we raced away, destroying the tracks as the large chunks of debris fell.

The end of the track came at us in a hurry and the tunnels behind us continued to collapse. The only choice I had now was to launch the quick car off of the track and hope for the best. "**Everybody hold on tight**!" I shouted to inform my friends to brace themselves. The car launched off of the track and we flew through the air for some time. "**Brace yourselves**!" I yelled out seconds before the car struck ground. The moment it did, my head was thrashed forward and I cracked my skull against the edge of the front of the car, knocking me out cold. The car continued to slide against the stone ground of the tunnels for a good forty three feet before slamming its right side against a pile of debris in front of it.

The collapsing tunnels has ceased a good distance back, but we were still trapped in the tunnels, and with the ceiling about as fragile as a sheet of glass with a boulder on top of it, we had to be careful yet swift fleeing the area. Pieces of rock fell from the ceiling every once and awhile and the danger of having it collapse in on us grew ever more present. "What do we do now Sunni?" Eric whispered loudly so that he could be heard but not have the echo of his voice bring the tunnel down. When I didn't answer, he looked over at my collapsed body. Worried for my safety he used his good leg to lift himself up and out of the car. He did his best to use the edge of the car to help maintain his balance while making his way over to me. When he reached the front of the car, he noticed the wound on my forehead, just an inch and a half above my left eye, bleeding. I had my eyes closed and I wasn't moving, so he reached over and checked my pulse on my neck. When he felt the small thumping in my neck, he felt slightly relieved. "She's alive. Just unconscious." He whispered in the same tone and volume.

Some more pieces of the ceiling fell to the ground and the reality of the danger became ever more apparent. "We have to get somewhere safe and treat our wounds." Rose loudly whispered back to Eric. Rose decided on sifting through the debris to craft some makeshift crutches for both Luna and Eric, and even managed to locate a small pool of water nearby. "That means that there could be water near the surface." She deduced while soaking a bandage, made from the sleeve of her lab coat, to wrap around my head to help keep the swelling to a minimum. It hurt to use her right arm, but she forced herself to work through the pain and wrapped my head with the crude bandage. She then hoisted me upon her back and began leading the group carefully through the tunnel to find a safe place.


	16. Chapter 16: Unexpected ally

Chapter 16: Unexpected ally

Eventually Rose located a hatch carved into the side of the wall of the quick tunnel and we entered it moments before the ceiling above our heads collapsed in behind us, blocking the entrance behind us. The hatch led to a tunnel that had a bright light at the end of it. The tunnel and hatch were oddly shaped for human access and so neither Rose nor Eric had to duck or crouch down to walk through. Rose led the way, with me on her back, toward the light at the end of the darkness. It took some time, and the three of them began to feel tired from the loss of blood, until they emerged into a lit room with other people inside. The other people noticed us walking through and one of them even spoke up. She was a girl with long blond hair. Her eye color would have been the same as Eric's of it wasn't for the fact that her left eye was made of glass and was accompanied by a nasty looking burn scar that pretty much covered her temple and branched down her cheek. She was even the same age as Eric and just as tall. Her face was nearly flawless other than the scar. Her body was also flawless other than her missing left arm at the bottom of the shoulder. Her voice was melodic and flowed like a female version of Eric in every way. "Eric?" she gasped. Eric wearily looked toward the owner of the voice and began to tear up upon recognizing her, "Ella?" he said just before fainting. After that, both Rose and Luna followed.

I awoke late the next day and found the girl leaning over me and talking, "Hello? Hello?" She kept saying over and over. When my senses finally returned to me, I began to stir and slowly arise from the bed I was placed on. She instinctively hovered her hand over me in attempt to keep me from hurting myself. "Easy there, easy." She prompted me. I sat completely up with a huge headache ringing in my skull and a real medical bandage wrapped around my head. "Can you tell me your name?" She asked me with some concern in her tone. I simply turned to her for a short while then continued attempting to hold my headache back with my right hand and answered, "Sunni Gummi" I kept myself propped up with my right arm and listened to her ask me other questions, "And how old are you, Sunni?" It was a little rude but I answered anyway, "Eighteen." Suddenly she changed her tone of voice to relief, "Good. It doesn't look like you have amnesia, at least for now. I'm Ella Lohengrin." The last name his me like a freight train. "Lohengrin?" I repeated. "Then you are a member of Eric's family?" "I'm his twin sister as a matter-of-fact." She answered me. "I take it he doesn't talk much about me." "He didn't talk much about his past at all. He believed that you were all **dead**." I told her. My head was still pounding so she ended up giving me a strong pain killer to help with it. They tasted like chalk mixed with bits of steel.

Once my head died down enough for me to get out of bed, she led me around the little hospital clinic and showed me her brother's room. I entered and was greeted by a groggy, "Hello beautiful." He had a bandage around his leg where the bullet wound was located and he was apparently eating a cup of red jell-o from his meal. I quickly walked up and climbed on the bed to give him a huge hug of relief. "I thought we were going to die back there. What happened?" He propped me down off of the bed and simply said, "We'll get together and talk later. You should get yourself a meal here first." He said to me. I gestured back at Ella and exclaimed, "And when were you going to tell me that you were a **twin**?" Eric looked at me like I had gone insane for a while and softened his look when he realized that I meant that in an endearing way. "I actually didn't expect to find any members of my family alive. So this comes as a shock to me too." He answered. I was too excited to notice my stomach grumbling at me and squealed, "Still, a twin! That's so great." "Alright, Sunni. Let's let Eric get some rest and get something to eat." I agreed with her with a simple slightly disappointed, "Ok", and allowed her to lead me, with her only arm, around the area.

She took me outside the clinic after the doctors did a quick check on me to see if I was alright and were astonished to find out how fast I was recovering from trauma to the head. Then they allowed Ella to take me out of the building to see the town. The entire town was developed throughout most of the forest where Drekmore once stood. The town was almost completely made from material stolen from random construction sites throughout the City of Dunwyn. "How did you guys get all of this?" I asked in complete awe. Ella simply smiled at me and giggled lightly, "We work as a family to acquire everything we need to survive out here. Everyone had their expertise and skills to aid the family and everyone always gets the opportunity to use them to their full potential." Remembering my own family, I became nostalgic once again and solemnly lowered my head in silent memory. Ella seemed to notice my nostalgia and asked, "Thinking about your own family?" I snapped out of the nostalgia and turned to look at Ella, who had a kind and caring look to her complexion, even the scared part of her face. I felt comfortable talking to her and it had been some time before I talked to a girl my age. "Yah, watching them all **die **in front of you kinda has that effect I guess." I didn't actually mean to sound pessimistic but I felt true in some ways. She actually lowered her head in her own nostalgia, "Yah, that's true." She said, agreeing with me. "You also saw your parents die?" I asked slightly shocked. Still looking solemn, she nodded and placed her right and on her left shoulder and gripped her missing arm tightly. "You lost more than just your parents that day, didn't you?" I sadly asked her. She stood where she was and simply gripped her missing arm tighter as it to attempt to squeeze another one out of the stump that was her shoulder. She then tightly closed her right eye and tears began to run down her right cheek. Seeing the slightly ghastly scenario of her sobs, I placed my right pay on her right side and quietly said, "I'm so sorry." And I also began to cry.

Later, after we had stopped crying and feeling sorry for ourselves, Ella continued the tour of the small town and we stopped at a quaint little restaurant for a bite to eat. "You wouldn't happen to be a vegetarian would you?" Ella asked awkwardly. "Ella, I'm a **bear**. I'll eat meat if I have to. And in all honesty, I could use a good steak right now." The moment the words finished leaving my mouth, my stomach second the motion by voicing its opinion loudly. Ella laughed at the timing of the situation and said to me, "I don't know about a steak, but I can introduce you to a hamburger." I raised my right eyebrow in confusion. "What's a 'hamburger'?" I asked. She simply looked at me with a strange expression and sarcastically stated, "You sound like you were raised in the medieval times." "I was." I told her assuming that Eric had already said something to her about the time stone. Her eyes went wide with disbelief and she looked like she was about to laugh at me, thinking that my statement might be a joke. "I'm not joking. Eric didn't tell you about how he met me?" I asked her. "He must have left a few parts out. He's always been fascinated with the legend of the gummi bears and often would pretend that he was one when we were younger. So you can imagine his excitement when someone traded you to him." She said to me. The tidbit of information about Eric's childhood was interesting, but still, "Please don't remind me that I'm considered a tradable object, here." Ella used her right hand to lightly scratch her right cheek in slight embarrassment and responded, "Oh, yah. That is probably very disconcerting to you." She then perked back up and asked me, "Anyway, if you were born and raised in the medieval era, then how did you get here?" I was beginning to wonder about her own story and decided to retort with, "I'll tell you my story if you tell me how you got that scar." She shot her eye wide open in surprise and then turned solemnly to one side to think about it. After a short period of silence, she finally answered with, "Alright, but not here. I'll tell you in Eric's hospital room. He probably has questions as well."

I enjoyed me first hamburger. The concept of the idea seemed rather ingenious to me. A ground up beef patty topped with vegetables and other things you can try. To say the least, it was very different than ordering a hunk of meat and cutting it up yourself. Of course Ella picked up the tab and I was grateful. On the way back to the hospital to meet up with Eric, I recounted the horrible events that passed by since my birthday. I seemed to have gotten use to explaining my story over and over and I noticed that I didn't get choked up as much as I used to while remembering the horrible events, despite the shivers that ran down my spine as I talked. Before I even realized it, we had arrived at the hospital's front door and all I could think of was how small the town truly was.


	17. Chapter 17: Recollection of war

Chapter 17: Recollection of war

I sat down next to Eric's bedside at his left and Ella sat herself down at his foot, just in front of me. "The story I'm about to tell you happened around four years ago, right at the end of the final battle between the resistance group who called themselves the Neo-Gummi Battalion. Dad was the head of the battalion and mom always supported him. Eric and I were supposed to have been transferred together, but I decided to stay and help fight. That was the moment things went wrong." Ella tilted her head downward in solemn sorrow and sniffed a few times before continuing her story. "Eric was taken away to live with our grandfather and I purposely missed the transit to go with him. First thing that occurred was an attack chopper chased after the train and the rebellion was attacked without warning by a massive army. We all held them off the best we could and I eventually located our dad when I saw a large explosion off in the distance where the train was predicted to be." The moment she mentioned the train, Eric instinctively placed the first and second finger of his right hand on the scar he had on his right cheek. 'So **that's** where he got that scar.' I thought to myself before turning my attention back to Ella.

"Believe it or not, we actually were getting the upper hand on Igthorn's army for a while, until his fearsome elite squad of assassins joined in the fight." "Igthorn has a band of assassins?" I gasped. "There were ten of them at first. But dad personally reduced that number down to six before he and mom succumbed to their wounds. They were each skilled in different weapons and tactics. One of them was a skilled small explosives expert and I was unfortunate to receive one of his explosives against my arm." She had grown nostalgic while she spoke of the assassin that blew her arm off and she turned her head to look at her missing arm with her good eye. "For a while I laid in the ground screaming in pain from both the burn wounds that took my eye and the blast that took my arm, and apparently, one of the assassins was a woman who took to my plight. She spared my life and held the other assassins back until the others could escape. She lives now as the village 'mother'." She then turned to Eric and asked rather boldly hoping that she didn't strike a nerve, "What happened to you on the train, Eric?"

He was taken aback by that question and finally figured that he should answer. "The attack chopper chased the train as you said. It also caught up to it in a hurry, and attacked relentlessly. Civilians, children, elderly and sick were being taken to safety and they still attacked. It was led by Igthorn's head general, Maximus Landwall. Once our father's best friend, he now turned to Igthorn's side and destroyed all in his path." His voice was harsh when he spoke about the man who had betrayed his father's trust and softened it when he spoke of his next actions. "Somehow I had survived the destruction of the train and lie in the ground with a few minor burns and scrapes. I was terrified and just wanted to escape as fast as I could when he appeared in front of me, pointing his rapier at my face." His intensity faded as he recalled the next confusing events, "But, he didn't kill me. Instead he simply swiped the tip of the rapier across my cheek and said to me, 'I never wanted it to come to this. If you see your father, tell him I'm sorry for his foolishness,' and then walked away after commanding his troops to stand down. After that, I made my way to the closest town and got myself treated by a local mechanic. He taught me everything I know. Four years later, I built my own workshop and eventually came across you." He said turning his gaze to me.

"You said that the assassin woman became the head of the village. Could we talk to her?" I asked Ella. She simply smiled and said, "I don't see why not. It's not like she hardly makes herself known. I'll take you to her home." She then turned to her brother and said, you stay here and rest. I'll see if I can bring her to you." She then led me through the small quaint town to a house built within walking distance from a small creek of crystal clear water. The house was well built and even painted white and surrounded by local plants. Along the right side of the house I noticed something that I thought that I wouldn't ever see again since the bombing at the glen. It was a row of gummi berry bushes, and they even looked tame. Two bushes of every color followed the house's side in a perfect row and groomed in perfect oval spheres. "Gummi berries?" I gasped in nostalgia and surprise. "Apparently she also has the greenest thumb anyone has ever seen. She grew them from seeds and has been caring for them since." Ella explained to me. Then she added, "Did you know that they make delicious pies?" The statement was slightly awkward and I was slightly speechless to a retort for it. The silence caused Ella to feel the awkwardness of her earlier statement and she cleared her throat before returning to the original subject. "So, this is where she lives. Shall we go and see if she's home?" She grinned in embarrassment, still making the situation more awkward so I decided to walk toward the house before anything else 'different' slipped past her lips again. We reached the front door of the single story house and Ella proceeded to knock three times. A minute later, a woman in her early thirties opened the door. She was perfectly fit and around five feet and eight inches tall. Her black hair was cut to about shoulder length and the front of it curled just under her ears. She had hazel-green eyes that had a large amount of kindness and strength behind them and she even wore a soft smile when she looked at Ella. "Oh, Ella. How is your brother doing?" She asked in a smooth feminine voice that simply echoed with parental wisdom. Her face was gorgeous for a human and she even resembled what Calla may have looked like at her age. Her outfit was fairly streamline, she wore form fitting denim jeans and a form fitting cotton blouse that partially exposed her belly button and wore a denim jacket over her blouse. She also walked around her house barefoot. "Eric is recovering well. I wanted to introduce you to the gummi bear that was found with the others. This is Sunni Gummi. Sunni, this is Selina Alumsdale, the town's 'mother'." Ella introduced us. "It's a pleasure to meet you Sunni." Selina said as she bowed slightly to me. She was even extremely polite. I just had to know her story.

"So how did you go from assassin, to the town's 'mother'?" I asked outright. Selina nodded her head back slightly as she giggled at my question, "Ella told you about me, huh? Well, I signed up as an assassin to make a difference in the world, because I believed that it was the rebellion that was causing the world to be thrown into chaos. But, I could never bring myself to harm a child. It was that battle that helped me see who the real villain was. When the general was ordered to destroy the train of innocent civilians and elderly people, I knew that there was something wrong with the orders to take out the resistance. I made my final decision when I found Ella badly wounded. I then discarded my title as an assassin and led them all to safety as a new friend. It's only Ella who calls me the town 'mother' though. Some of the other villagers still harbor feelings toward me, but I vowed never to kill again."


	18. Chapter 18: Original recipe

Chapter 18: Original recipe

"I heard that you grew those gummi berry bushes from a seeds. How did you even do that?" I asked with surprise and wonder. "Believe it or not, these bushes are sixteen years old. I wandered out here during an assignment and came across your gummi berry bushes and that little house near the glen tree. I then decided to take a couple of berries and taste them. When I found out how wild they were, I wondered how they tasted in the olden days. So I collected as many seeds as I could and grew them out here where Igthorn couldn't see. I continuously snuck out each night and cared for them until they sprouted and grew into these strong healthy bushes you see. The berries are the sweetest I've ever tasted and I often use them in delicious pies that the entire village simply devours each time I bake them." Selina answered. "You may try some if you wish." I walked over to a bush with blue gummi berries on it and plucked one off. I braced myself for a sour and wild taste, but soon found myself enjoying the sweet succulent flavor of the gummi berries from back home. "I haven't had a gummi berry like this in **so** long." I swooned and then had a brilliant idea. "Would you mind if I made a batch of gummi berry juice?" I asked. She looked at me in shock like she never thought that a gummi bear like me could possibly know how to make gummi berry juice. "Uh... well... sure, I guess." She stuttered with surprise as she spoke. "Thank you mam. I'll need a ten gallon cauldron, and a lot of gummi berries."

Throughout the next hour or so, Ella and I continued on picking as many berries as we could and brought them into the house. It was nice because the side of the house that had the gummi berry bushes, had an overhang on the roof, as if it was a awning with shingles. "So why exactly did you want to make gummi berry juice and **how** do you make gummi berry juice?" Selina asked still confused and curious. "Gummi berry juice could be vital in helping defeat Igthorn, and it is created through boiling the berries until the skins dissolve. I'm pretty sure you've noticed that in your pies. Once a gummi berry reaches a certain temperature, the skin begins to dissolve and blend with the juice, making it a touch thicker." I answered. "Oh, I always wondered how that came to be. No matter how many berries I would put in the pies, they would be always rich with filling and with no berries inside." Selina said with revelation.

Remembering the recipe Grammi taught me in my preteen years, I started to boil the water and carefully selected the berries by color. However, I hadn't done the special stir in a long time and began to get nervous hoping that I didn't blow up the batch. I dropped the handfuls of berries in and watched as the berry skins dissolved and left behind a cloud of crimson-purple mixture within the water. Another handful did the same thing and eventually the dark purple cloud had spread throughout the entire batch. "You guys tapped into the gummi glen water system, didn't you?" I noticed as the batch was coming out well as I dropped another handful in. "It was the cleanest water we could find. Igthorn polluted most of the water sources around here to try to flush out the village last year." Ella answered for Selina. I dropped the last handful of berries in and in a few seconds it was the moment of truth. I took the spoon and placed it into the cauldron's contents and spun it around according to what I remember Grammi instructing me to do. The contents mixing evenly in both directions, I pulled the large spoon out of the pot and crossed my fingers as I struck the spoon against the side of the cauldron. A good mass of bubbles rose to the surface and expelled their gasses. The juice was now ready for use. "I did it!" I rejoiced lightly to myself.

"So, why did you need to strike the side of the pot?" Ella asked. It seemed that Selina was curious about that as well. "Well, when the skin dissolves it produces a gas. The gas gets trapped in bubbles that stick to the cauldron's sidewalls, and need to be released from the cauldron's sides. That is why you strike the side of the cauldron. You shouldn't hit it too hard though. If the bubbles burst inside of the juice, the whole thing explodes and gets thrown everywhere." I explained to them. "I wonder why that doesn't happen to my pies." Selina asked mostly to herself. "You don't use enough gummi berries to worry about that too much." Was my theory. "Besides, the pie is probably shallow enough to expel the gasses of the berries individually and it most likely just burns up in the oven." Selina placed the tip of the first finger of her right hand near the corner of her mouth and slightly looked up and away from me to think about the logic behind my theories. "That actually sort of makes sense." She then said. "I'll bet you could be quite the little cook." I was flattered until I remembered that Ella promised that she would bring Selina to meet Eric. "Ella, you said that you were going to let Eric talk to Selina." I reminded her when we heard a voice pipe in from the front door, "So it's true! One still exists! A gummi bear!" His voice was aged slightly and even a little gruff. Our gaze shot to the door to see who owned the voice that sounded so in shock. It was a middle aged man with a brown moustache and goatee. His face was slightly wrinkled, showing his age, and he looked a mere five foot tall, give or take two inches. His grayish green eyes were wide with surprise the expression also clearly written on his face and using his graying eyebrows to show it. He wore a red and black plaid button up shirt, proper fitting jeans and light brown work boots. He was also surprisingly well fit for his age and didn't look like he would break down any time soon. One by one, people appeared at the front door to look at me and confirm the rumors for themselves. I had no idea that a simple stroll through town would wind up granting me so much publicity. First people struggled to believe in us at all, and now I'm like a prodical daughter coming back to her family farm, humbled and wise. They continued to talk amongst themselves about their surprise and I even over heard the price for me alive in the market. Suddenly a thought came to me and I asked Ella, "What about Rose and Luna?" "Rose got out of surgery yesterday and is in one of the rooms close to Eric's. Luna has been sedated because she was throwing tantrums large enough to have injured herself and three nurses." Ella answered.


	19. Chapter 19: Unexplained consequences

Chapter 19: Unexplained consequence

After answering a few questions from all of the spectators, I bottled up some of the gummi berry juice and placed the top on the pot. Then the three of us made our trip back to the hospital to visit the others. Along the way, we stopped at a few merchant booths and Ella purchased a leather side bag to help me transport the bottles of gummi berry juice better. We visited Luna first. Apparently her sedation had worn off and she was out of bed and walking around holding her side like it was still very sore. "Luna." I said while entering the room. She turned around to see where the voice had come from and began to relax when she saw me. "Sis. What is this place? Where are we?" She asked slightly nervous. "They removed the bullet from your side and set you down to heal. I hear you've been giving the nurses a hard time." I said with slight truth and sarcasm all rolled into one. She gently shuffled her left foot back and forth in embarrassment and said lightly, "I was worried about you. They told me that you had cracked your skull against the quick car and I just wanted to see if you were alright." "How is your side?" I asked. She placed her hand on her once wounded side and answered, "It still stings but otherwise I think it's healed." "Perhaps you should get back in bed." I suggested, "You actually may have a greater pain tolerance than most others. Mine was the lightest wound of all of them and I can actually still feel it every now and then." My statement was true, throughout the day, that spot on my head would cramp up and I would have fleeting headaches.

Reluctantly, Luna crawled back into her bed and folded her arms in a huff. I decided to at least try and cheer her up before going to check on Rose. "Here." I said reaching into the new leather bag that Ella had bought for me and bringing out a bottle of gummi berry juice. I placed it on the counter close to her and she asked, "What is it?" "This is gummi berry juice. Don't drink it until you absolutely have to." I warned her. She looked up at me and asked, "How come? What does it do?" "I don't know what it does to gummi bear clones, but my guess is it might do the same thing it does to a gummi bear." She looked at me confused and worried until I answered, "I makes us bounce like rubber." She lifted her left eyebrow in annoyance, confusion and insult at the same time and said, "That's just crazy." "Just trust me on this. It'll come in handy." I stated in confidence. She simply shrugged her shoulders and slid into her covers to try and rest some more.

We continued to the next room, which was Rose's room and once we entered, we saw her treating her own wound with a kind or device that resembled a kind of metal tube with lights and two buttons. "Rose, what are you doing?" I asked with slight confusion on my face. She looked at us with a fright and was finally relieved once she realized that the three of us were all females. "Don't startle me like that. This is an experimental procedure. I just finished programming it a few minutes ago. I'm hoping that it works and heals the wound faster than natural healing." She explained. She had removed her top to handle the small device. She rubbed the tip of her device around the wound, completely exposing her naked breasts to us every now and then. "Experimental... procedure?" I was thoroughly confused now and tilted my head slightly to the right side to show it. "I'm going to call it, 'Cell Regenerative Frequency Scans'. I simply program this tiny scanner with a wavelength that activates and accelerates the regenerative qualities of cell reproduction. Each set of cells, I figure, responds to a different wavelength so figuring it out may be tough so I asked the doctor for tissue samples from my wound to try and figure it out and, voila." As she spoke, the wound on her shoulder began to rapidly seal itself and even the skin that was sewn together began to fuse together and momentarily evaporated into thin air. I failed to notice her cringing as the wound healed itself. "That was amazing!" I said turning my gaze to look as her face which had tears of pain streaming down its cheeks. "She relaxed her brow in a few seconds and retorted in heavy breaths, "Yah, but it hurts like hell", and flopped back down onto her pillow. Then she asked herself, "If it hurts that much from such a small wound that has been already treated, what would it be with an equal sized wound that hasn't been treated and the body is already feeling the intense pain?" "Maybe you should take some pain killers?" I suggested with worry in my voice. "That's just it Sunni. I **am** on pain killers." She answered.

My eyes opened wide at the concept of the whole thing. "How could regenerating hurt so much worse than the initial wound?" I found myself asking aloud. Before Rose could try and answer with her endless vocabulary, an explosion interrupted her thought process. The explosion came from the outskirts of the town and another one followed in closer. These explosions were soon followed by two more explosions and thus followed by two more. Rose shot out of bed and quickly and hurried to put on her bra and hospital shirt. During that Ella, Selina and I ran to the nearest window to view where those explosions had come from. "Igthorn's army? How did they find us?" Selina stated in surprise. In an instant, I ran to Eric's room while Rose and Luna dashed out of their own and followed. "Eric. Igthorn found the village." I stated to him in a mild panic. I found him sitting in his bed looking at me with a determined look.

"It's him." He told me with slight anger in his voice and vengeance written upon his face. "Who?" I asked as another explosion erupted inside the village. He sank deeper into vengeful anger as he recited his name, "Maximus Landwall!" The name rang in my head like a cemetery bell from Eric's earlier story of how he had gotten his scar. "The guy that led the attack that killed your father?" I gasped at the realization. His face tensed up even more when I reminded him of the treachery that man had committed. His eye brows lowered in defining anger and he clenched his teeth tightly. His hands balled themselves up into tight fists and he began growling at the mere thought of him. "This won't be his only attack point." Selina stated. "He prides himself on his three pronged attack patterns. He'll have two more striking points set up already. And you can bet that the other four assassins are gonna target me." "Miss Selina, let me battle at your side." Ella asked. Eric snapped out of his revere when he heard his sister beg to go back into battle. "Are you crazy, Ella? You only have one arm! What if you get yourself killed?" He shouted with concern for his sister. She simply glared at her brother and said, "Not doing anything is worse than dying. Besides, I've more than made up for the absence of my arm. I can fight. Miss Selina trained me." As we all turned her gaze to her, Selina replied with a calm determined expression, "It was the only way I knew how to bring her confidence back and teach her how to live with only one arm and eye. Her left side is both blind and deaf, so she compensates by staying mobile."

"But you swore off killing?" I reminded her. She turned to me with even more confidence than I have ever seen in a human and replied, "I'd gladly break my vow to never kill again to protect these people from annihilation." She then turned her attention to Ella. "You will be protecting your brother and his friends. Quickly get your weapon and come back here." Ella reluctantly nodded and ran off to retrieve the mysterious weapon that was mentioned. "You both must survive." She then said to both Luna and I. "Word will spread that two gummi bears survived Igthorn's wrath and are now fighting against his rule. As long as you survive, you will inspire many people to rise up and take the fight."


	20. Chapter 20: Blood of war

Chapter 20: The blood of war

Just then, the roaring of troops storming the village echoed through the air and I instinctively gazed out of the window to view the adversary. What I saw was an army of humans engaging and slaughtering the citizens of the village. "Those are all humans!" I stated with surprise. "Where are the ogres?" "Ogres serve as Igthorn's personal army." Rose answered. "They only accompany him when he decides to join the battle and only joins when he spots a worthy opponent. He's only ever done that once that I know of and that was when he fought against the clone that killed his love, Lady Bane." As she explained this, we hardly noticed the soldiers entering the hospital until the sound of the first spray of bullets rang through the building. "Give me your leg Eric." Rose demanded and then asked, "You're on pain killers, right?" Confused, he simply answered, "Yes, my family naturally had a tolerance for the side effects. Why do you need my leg?" "I need to acquire the frequency of your cells. This is going to hurt like hell." She answered and then quickly flung the blanket off of him. She then pressed her tiny device on his wound and began pressing the single button twice while connecting another device to it. A light humming came from it and Eric jolted like something pricked him. "Ow. It wasn't as bad as you described." He retorted. "What are you talking about? That was just the tissue scan." Rose responded. She then gazed at her small device that she had connected to her little regenerating device and waited for it to finish blinking and making beeping noises.

Before her small device that resembled another device that I learned was known as a "cell phone" could finish doing its job, the doors burst open across the hall from us and war soldiers began flooding in toward us. If you counted, you may have come up with a total of twenty soldiers or more, armed with machine guns aimed right at us. "Freeze and we may let you live." One of the soldiers said to us, while aiming his gun at us. The soldier's outfits were all uniform in exact look and equipment. Their heads were hidden using a blue cloth hood that covered their entire head, their faces were covered with a mask that resembled a respirator and a demons mask mixed together. Adorned over the head of the cloth hood was a dark blue helmet that covered even the ears. His uniform was dark navy blue as well. Under his uniform they all wore vests that made them look more muscular than they actually were and they even wore black gloves that were long enough to cover their elbows. The soldier's pants were colored dark navy blue as well and each of them wore a combat knife strapped to their right sides. They also wore knee-high black combat boots with another knife on the left foot and a nine-millimeter hand gun on the right. The soldier in front soon recognized the determined glare coming off of Selina and hesitated before saying in a surprised gasp, "Commander Alumsdale?" She simply walked toward him and stared into the goggles of his uniformed mask and said, "Get your men to stand down **now** if any of you value your lives." The soldier then began shivering violently as if he had witnessed firsthand what she was capable of doing and what her very glare meant. Several of the men also had the same look throughout their bodies and it was confirmed when one of them on the left side of the squad leader raised his gun. In a flash, before anyone could even finish blinking, she had snatched the machine gun from the soldier with her right hand and grabbed the knife on his side with her right. If anyone blinked at this moment, they missed the rest of the amazing precision she displayed. She yanked the gun out of the soldier's very hands, spun the combat knife around and plunged the blade through the bottom of his chin and into his head and before anyone could process 'what just happened', she released the knife, not getting a single drop of blood on her hand. Blood gushed out of the man's wound and completely coated the handle of the serrated knife. The man fell backward into the crowd of soldiers as the blood spilled off of the bottom of the knife's handle, and struck the ground, dead. And all-the-while, Selina maintained her cold, determined expression. "Before any of you decide to avenge your fallen comrade, remember that I have been trained in the art of assassination. I am capable of removing all of you from this plane without getting as much as a **drop** of your blood on me. So again, if you value your lives, just stand down now." She urged them. The men simply gave in to their fear and stepped aside, allowing us to move through.

"I need time and an open space to regenerate Eric's tissue and heal his bullet wound." Rose exclaimed as her scanning device sounded off, indicating that the frequency scan was completed. "Heal him quickly and let's get out of here." Selina stated, never once breaking her frightening gaze at the soldiers. Rose then jammed the device onto his wound and activated it. The look a searing pain painted itself on his face and he began to yell to show just how much he was in. His face scrunched itself together and tears began running from his tightly closed eyes. His fists clenched tightly and he held onto the bed sheets as if his life depended on it.

The process only lasted a few moments, but it still killed me to see him in that much pain. I began crying myself as if I felt the intense pain that he was feeling. Even the soldiers, with their guns, cringed in fear at the mere thought of the pain if it wasn't deafened by pain killers. In six seconds flat, his screams faded down to a mere cringe and heavy breathing. "What a trooper." A soldier in the third row whispered to another adjacent to him. The other soldier simply nodded in agreement and added, "Yah, he survived... whatever that was." Then they were astonished when Eric stood up and began testing his balance to see if it worked properly, however, Rose looked sort of perplexed. "How come it took so long for the scanner to identify my frequencies and only mere minutes to identify Eric's?" She asked more to herself than anyone else. Instinctively, as if he was in school, one of the soldiers raised his hand to receive permission to present a theory. "I think I have an idea, mam." He said to get her attention. His comrades simply stared at him inquisitively as Rose asked him, "Yes, and what would that be?" "Perhaps it took longer because you scanned your frequencies from scratch, with nothing for the machine to compare it too. When you scanned the boy's frequency, it already had yours encoded and thus may not have had to change that much." Rose nodded to accept his theory as one of the soldier's comrades simply mocked, "Egghead!" If he had his mask removed, there would literally be no hiding his blush.


	21. Chapter 21: Shining Star

Chapter 21: Shining star

Picking up the dead soldier's discarded machine gun, Selina kept the barrel aimed at the cooperating soldiers, effectively keeping them at bay. Eric, Rose and I slowly made our way through the crowd of soldiers and into the hallway. We still could identify the screams of some of the citizens being mercilessly slaughtered from outside the hospital window and from down the hall. Before we left I decided to ask the one questioned that burned in my mind since this began. "Why is this bloodshed necessary?" I asked aloud. The soldiers looked at each other with confusion almost as if none of them could answer my question truthfully. "You don't even know why you kill your own kind?" I added to my earlier question. "It's because we were labeled the enemy and they were trained to simply obey their orders without question. It's only when we stop to ask those questions do we see the truth of it." Selina answered for the soldiers. I looked at her with a newfound sense of respect for her as she continuously surprised me. There must have been around twelve or thirteen soldiers and she had them all scared to death with just one single move and still displayed a certain wisdom, like she had experienced all of this before.

"You guys get moving. I can keep these guys at bay and catch up in a hurry." Selina ordered with a slight confident smile. With that, the other soldiers simply gulped with fear and she retorted, "Oh don't give me that! I'm not going to kill anyone that I don't have to." And the some of the soldiers released the breath that they have been holding. We made our way out of the hospital with Selina slowly following us and picking off any soldiers that decided to pursue. We finally made it to the ground floor and exited through an emergency exit only to wind up face to face with another squadron of soldiers led by a tall skinny man dressed completely in black. He wore a mask made from steel that still revealed his dark red eyes and the insanity swirling deep within them. The mask was shaped like his face only it had on it, red paint swirling around the top of the like a wispy eyebrow and made its way down the cheek. The mask was designed to be perfectly symmetrical and he even had a red headband around the mask's forehead. He cackled with delight in a high pitched laugh and said, "Out of the frying pan and into the firing squad! Any last words, Selina Alumsdale?" "Derik Umara!" Were her only words as she lowered her eyebrows in serious defense. "Eee, he, he, he! Who would have thought that you actually fall for one of my traps? You're losing your touch Scarlet Star!" Eric and Rose looked at Selina as if they had finally realized something. "You are the Scarlet Star?" Rose exclaimed. "I think the appropriate term would be I **used to be** the Scarlet Star." She responded through her teeth. I simply stood there confused. "I don't get it." I said finally. Eric stood by and answered my thoughts with a touch of fear on his face, "The Scarlet Star was both a famous assassin and thief. She was a master of the giant shuriken and was capable of decimating half of an army single handedly whilst picking their pockets." Selina seemed to take offense to the remark. "I never stole from the innocent. I only cleaned up the streets of the city and returned whatever was stolen in the first place. Sort of like the tales of Robin Hood."

"Enough of your prattle!" Derik screamed in insane delight. I'm going to enjoy watching the blood erupt from your body while these men pump you full of bullets!" "You were always insane, Derik." Selina said through her teeth. "Maybe so, but that's why I always win!" He shouted maniacally before jetting his right arm forward, pointing at our little group and screaming, "**FIRE!**" We all thought that that was it and we were going to get turned into swiss cheese. But nothing happened and it took us all a few seconds to realize that there was no pain. We slowly opened our eyes and saw the squadron of men standing there and Derik looking back, wondering why they didn't shoot. Moments later, the entire squad fell onto their faces with blood spraying from large slash wounds in their backs. "What?" Derik asked from behind his mask. He then turned back toward our group and pulled out a pair of strange looking blades. They pointed past his wrists and just beyond his elbows and the handle was latched sideways on the blades. "Fine then. I guess I'll just have to kill you all **myself**!" He stated in more insane delight. As he readied himself for battle, a giant eight pointed metal star with blades about as long as Selina's arm came in from nowhere and buried one of the blades into the ground around ten feet from Selina herself. The star was amazing looking, eight points evenly spaced and evenly long the edges of each point were sharpened to form a sword blade in the exact shape of the weapon. The center of the star had a hole with a single bar stretching across for a handle. The handle was even one and a half hands in length. Its silvery blue hue captured my gaze completely and had yet to release its grip. "Sensei, I got your shuriken for you. I thought that you might need it." We heard Ella's voice shout from afar. Instinctively, we turned our gaze to where her voice came from and found her atop the hospital roof behind us. In her hand, she held another star designed similar but only had four points instead of eight. Selina then nodded her approval to Ella and raced in toward her weapon.

Noticing her movements, Derik lunged at her to try and slay her before she could reach her weapon in time. Selina never turned her gaze from Derik as she reached across her body with her right hand, snagged her giant shuriken by the handle and brought it up to block Derik's attack who had come in with a quick stabbing motion. The weapons met and rang aloud from the clash, letting their song of battle be known to the entire world. The two struggled against the other's weapon, trying to push either one to his or her knees. "You think you're a hero of some sort. Don't you, Scarlet Star?" Derik taunted. Selina gritted her teeth and retorted, "And you have yet to fully master those Tonfa blades." With that, the pushed with all of her might and he flew off of her only to gracefully land on his feet just six feet away. He tilted his head back and began laughing insanely. He took a deep breath once he had emptied his lungs and glared at Selina through his steel mask and stated, "You truly have lost your touch, Scarlet Star! You would have killed me by now and searched my wallet for money four years ago!" "Shut up! I've never killed an innocent soul in my life." She answered him. "Oh, please! You think all of the people you had stopped were **guilty** of those crimes?" Derik asked maniacally. Now we all were extremely confused and Selina most of all. "I must admit, it was quite fun to improve my speed by stealing someone's purse, hand it to a nearby stranger and threaten his life if he didn't run away with it." A sudden realization hit Selina as she recalled one incident where she thought that she could hear the perpetrator actually pleading for his life as he ran away with a stolen purse. The person was a pretty fast and she had started out not too long ago and still was getting used to accurately throwing her shuriken weapon. The only way she could see to stop him was to try and make him fall by tossing the weapon in front of him to scare him but, she missed and the shuriken accidently slashed through the man's back, killing him.

She failed to notice Derik lunging at her once more while she was distracted and was barely able to dodge before he plunged one of his Tonfa blades through her right shoulder. "Sensei!" Ella called out as she saw the attack commence and fade. The two of them simply stood there for a time until, Derik pulled the blade out of Selina's shoulder and jump backward and away. Selina then collapsed to her knees and gripped her wounded shoulder. It began to burn intensely from the weight of her weapon and it was all she could do to hold on to it. Once again, Derik began to laugh insanely and shouted, "Your time in paradise made you a fool! You never even realized that I was the one allowing you to play 'hero' in the city alley ways. It was so enjoyable to figure out new ways to get you to cut people down. It's too bad I have to destroy you now. And while you are thinking about your penance, I'll be busy destroying everything you hold dear!"


	22. Chapter 22: Penance of Scarlet

Chapter 22: Penance of scarlet

Words rang in the air and heavy and harsh, nearly stopping time in its tracks. Words of truth and of deception, words that finally broke the spirit of a once proud warrior. Selina listened to them and found that the pain those words struck her with, hurt worse than the fresh wound in her shoulder. Her blood spilling onto the fertile ground beneath her and heavy drops of rain beginning to strike her face and arms. Teardrops began forming on her face as her life flashed every possible murder she may have committed. Her senses racing so fast it was as if, Derik's next lunge took forever and a day. Her thoughts racing as fast as her senses until coming up with the conclusion that she may never be forgiven for the wrongs she had done, but at least she can avenge the lives of those she accidently ended. She reached over and took the giant shuriken into her left hand and swung the weapon across her field of vision, knocking one of Derik's Tonfa blades right out of his hand. A moment of silence as time caught up with her. She simply kept staring at the ground, gritting her teeth and spitting air through them in rage and anger. "Bastard." She finally blurted out. "How dare you play with innocent people's lives?" She then stood up while Derik was stunned from her sudden recovery. Her glare was dark and unrelenting toward him. "You have no soul. I was going to go easy on you and continue using my weaker hand, but you don't deserve my sympathy anymore." Her voice turned dark and something in her eyes had changed. She then quickly brought the shuriken in front of her and darted in toward Derik at faster speeds than he.

Panicking, he reared back and cried out, "Please don't hurt me! I promise that I won't do it again!" Selina never broke her glare but instead continued with her strike saying, "If you think that pitiful whimpering trick will save you, you're **dead** wrong." She then quickly brought the eight pointed weapon back across her body faster than any of us could blink, cutting open Derik's black clothes and revealing his pale white skin and diminished build. A small horizontal cut ran along the center of his chest and he looked down at it in surprise and fear. Selina then spun around and slashed again with her weapon only this time it was vertical. The strike failed to touch his skin but did nick its tip against the steel mask. Selina's final strike was as follows. She brought the shuriken close to her body and pressed the blade against the back of her forearm to avoid placing any of the blades under her arm. She then thrust the weapon forward and plunged the blade of the star through his heart before he could react.

Again it seemed like time slowed to a mere crawl. Derik's steel mask split where the strike from earlier had damaged it, even the head band had been cut from the blade. The mask then fell to the ground revealing the true face of the assassin. It was thin and long. His eyes had rolled back from the killing blow but they were clearly dark red. With his blood beginning to pour out of his mouth Selina closed the gap in between them and whispered to him, "Don't you **ever** call me 'Scarlet Star' again." And with that, he tipped backward and she pulled out the shuriken just as Ella threw her shuriken to the ground like she had done with Selina's shuriken and slid down one of the down spouts of the hospital to meet us on the ground. "Sensei!" She called to Selina with worry on her voice. She reached her teacher and began inspecting her wound. "You're hurt." Ella exclaimed. "I'll be alright." Selina tried to calm Ella down by saying. "No way. You're bleeding pretty badly." Ella argued back. Selina stared Ella for a second with a surprised look on her face and finally relaxed and surrendered. "You sure are stubborn." She said with a smile. Her smile quickly faded as her thoughts returned to the possibilities of the innocent lives that she may have ended with her own hands. She may never know just how many and who they were.

Ella had just finished wrapping up Selina's wound when a couple of small explosions burst around a few yards away from us. They appeared to be tiny explosive devices that had detonated and both Selina and Ella recognized where they came from. "It's him again." Ella said through her teeth at the memory of the assassin that blew off her arm. She immediately stood up and placed herself in front of Selina and the explosions, shuriken ready. "Sensei, I wanna get this guy back for taking my arm from me. You protect the others for now. I'll meet you at the canal." Selina simply stared in awe at Ella's determination and confidence. Impatient to get us to safety, Ella then repeated herself with a louder tone of voice to get her sensei's attention. "I'm not going to repeat myself again! Get moving and leave the assassin to me!" She then narrowed her eyes with intensity and said aloud to herself, "I've got a score to settle with this one."

As we made our way to a safe area where we could watch and make sure she stayed in one piece, we heard a cackling voice ask, "I remember you! How's your arm?" His voice echoed even though there was nowhere for it to echo off of. Ella simply stood still as the rain began to drop from the sky, slow at first but quickly intensified. She continued to stand in place with her eyes closed, as if she was listening for something in all of that rain, her clothes getting wetter and wetter from all of the rain pouring down on to her. "Good girl, Ella" I heard Sierra whisper from directly behind me. Suddenly, Ella spun around to her left and launched her four-pointed weapon almost directly behind her. The weapon sailed until it scraped against a window of the hospital second floor and we finally noticed a shadowy silhouette dart out of the room she entered. The weapon then arched back to her until she caught it by the handle in the center with ease. She still had her eyes closed while she tossed the blade once again to the next window, scraping the glass diagonally upward and caught it again when it boomeranged back to her. She continued with this process, scarring each window until her chase reached the windows in front of her. She then waited, silently, silently. Standing as still as she could and not making a single sound, her eyes still closed and her entire body drenched from the rain that continued to beat down harder and harder. The rain, this time, wasn't cold like the last time, but had a strange warmth to it. Even though we still were in England.

She stood perfectly still for around a minute, allowing the rain to beat down in her. Suddenly, her eyes shot open and she jumped away as fast as she could, dodging small explosions as she side stepped and jetted forward and even lunged backward. Nimbly dodging the tiny explosions she escaped most of the harm. Her skin was singed a few times, as some of the explosions were larger than the rest, and she even took some shrapnel from one particular explosion. Nothing life threatening or debilitating, Ella stood back up after each attack and quickly dodged the next explosion. Finally, the explosions stopped and Ella stood in the hospital parking lot panting and out of breath, her eye shifting to random places she thought the assassin may be hiding.

His voice began emanating from all around once again. "You're much more skilled than I thought, little lady. But how long can you continue to dodge by mini-bombs?" He boasted. Ella quickly spun around and threw the shuriken toward the base of the building, scarring the wall on its return trip. Upon retrieving her weapon, she then threw it at another place near the walls of the hospital, scarring it as the weapon passed by. She repeated this process around six more times and during each attempt, his voice shifted positions to another area where a voice shouldn't even emanate from. "He's throwing his voice!" I thought aloud to myself. "I seems like it." Selina replied to me. "An assassin's greatest asset happens to be stealth and shadows. But, when it comes down to the wire and we are revealed, confusion is a powerful ally." "Can't she simply listen for the source?" I asked curiously. "Just as her right eye is blind, her right ear is half deaf. It's very difficult for her to focus on an echo if he is too far away from her. And he's got a good throwing arm." She informed me. My curiosity still not at ease, I asked her another question, "Aside from the man who took Ella's arm, who is this guy. I mean just as the last guy's name was Derik, what is his?" She hesitated for a moment and finally answered, "He was known as the Silver Flame, but his real name is Morton Remson. He specialized in compact explosives to annihilate his targets quickly and cause wide spread panic. He was given the nickname 'Silver' because that was the color of all of his devices."


	23. Chapter 23: Silver reflection

Chapter 23: Silver Reflection

Ella was now beginning to panic inside slightly even though her face never showed it at all. Her eye was focused and determined as ever, but she was beginning to run out of breath from throwing such a heavy weapon with but a single arm, and its stamina was depleting rather quickly. She also realized that it was possible that he still had some explosives in his arsenal, so she continued to listen for any sign of them, hoping not to have her other arm blown off. Ever so vigilant, she listened and used her good eye to watch for her foe. Just watching her, I felt a sense of peace and calm from this terrible scene. Suddenly, she sharply turned around and launched her giant blade toward the top of the building where the blade reached just as the head of a man poked out from hiding. The shuriken continued on as the head jumped literally off of the shoulders of its owner. The four pointed star circled around and came back just as a small explosion erupted from the location of the body. Ella reached up and snagged the giant blade once more and then collapsed to the ground, breathing heavily and her shoulder and hand now throbbing from the use of the weapon. She struggled slightly to stand back up but she eventually made it to our location and collapsed once again. "I'm sorry sensei, but," She took in a few deep breaths before finishing off her sentence, "This thing is damn heavy and I've never had to throw it so much before." "You know how I feel about that language, young lady." Selina scolded her. "Sorry, 'this thing is **darn** heavy'." Ella corrected herself. "I hate to break up the 'student/teacher' scenario, but we're not in the clear yet." Eric argued. "From Ella told me, there are still at least four other assassins out there plus an entire army led by the guy that killed our dad." "That's right. Maximus." Ella whispered mostly to herself.

She remembered her brother's story that described how he retrieved his scar when she heard a gruff voice behind her speak, "You father died of his foolishness. But yes, you could say that I was responsible for the attack that ended his life." Eric began to become furious at the mere sound of the voice that addressed us. Eric then burst out of his hiding place and faced the voice's owner. There behind Ella and in front of Eric stood a man in a white military uniform, decorated with many tassels and shoulder sashes. In his right hand, he aimed a saber to our group, deliberately pointing it at me. And on his left hip, he wore a six shot revolver of some kind. He stood fifteen feet from us but still was too close to us for my comfort. He stood perfectly still with his right arm standing out to aim his sword to me. He looked like he stood around five and a half feet tall and hand a medium to heavy build with broad shoulders. His skin was tanned dark and his hair was nearly a silvery color. Upon his head stood a white military cap that was decorated with a pin in the shape of an eagle that had its wings stretched past its head and looking upward positioned in the middle of the cap above the brim. His face was aged and his stare was as stone. His moustache began under his nose and followed his upper lip until it jetted straight downward to the end of his chin. "You are truly amazing as the stories say." He then said in his worn out, gruff voice. "You will not harm her ever, Landwall!" Eric shouted in rage from the memories of his youth. "Oh Eric, you are a fool like your father..." Maximus began until Eric interrupted him, "You have no right to talk about my father, you murderer. He trusted you. You were supposed to be friends" Eric's raised his voice louder and louder as he spoke, his rage beginning to boil over. "Boy, I will kill you where you stand if..." Again he was cut off, but not by anything Eric could say, but by what I did that scared him. I got up from my perch and ran in front of Eric, positioning myself in between Maximus' sword and the boy. Eric stood there in shock while Maximus stood there intrigued. "Stop please." I choked beginning to cry. "I don't understand this at all. **I just don't understand!**"

I stood my ground, afraid that he would simply run me through with his sword and be done with it. Instead he simply stood where he was, but he felt his arm begin to shake and shiver somewhat unnoticed by the untrained eye. "Why do you have to kill your own people?" I asked him. "He stood hesitant for a second and then answered, because they are my evil enemy." "Who, these innocent people that did nothing against you but live out of your city to escape the cruelty? How are they an enemy? They aren't trained for war. They just wanted to live their lives in peace. How does that merit an enemy?" His arm began shivering slightly more violently now. His breathing even became heavier simply from my words. "I just don't understand. All you do is destroy homes and families. And you think that this isn't evil? Look at them. How many are fighting back?" Without saying anything, Maximus looked around at the battlefield, gazing at the many citizens that simply fled from the field and were shot by a close soldier, never striking back and simply dying with no struggle. He turned his head to witness his assassins slaughtering innocent children trying to run from their perceived bad guy, mothers holding their dead children in their arms and being killed while grieving, fathers and brothers begging for their lives and being executed anyway.

"Oh, God. What have we become?" He asked himself finally dropping his sword and letting his whole body shiver as he fell to his knees. He then lifted his head to look back into my eyes and whispered, "It is said that a gummi bear has the capability to change the hearts of men with naught but words." He then spoke directly to me, "You have a good heart little one. I'm sorry to have shown you such evil. Don't you dare let your spirit become corrupted. Not as mine." He then pulled the revolver out of its holster and turned the gun backward to aim the barrel at his own chest. "I am sorry." He whispered again before pulling the trigger and piercing his own heart with the bullet. I instinctively covered my mouth with my paws to keep my screams down as I witnessed the blood splatter out of the back of his uniform and his lifeless body then collapse to the ground, never to rise again.

Eric grabbed me in his arms to attempt to comfort me from my recent experience when a soldier came up to our group, aiming his gun at Eric and me. He stood there, hesitant for a while turning his visor from the body of his commander to his targets. He then relaxed and motioned for us to escape.


	24. Chapter 24: Makes good bread

Chapter 24: Makes good bread

We moved through the battlefield as stealthily as possible, keeping to the shadows and avoiding any possible danger zones. It took what felt like forever but eventually we made it past the entire village and followed the water system above ground. We traveled for four days until we came to another quick tunnel door that hadn't caved in. It had rained the minute we escaped the battle and hadn't stopped since. Starving and cold, we made our way into the quick tunnel to at least get out of the rain. We built a fire to warm ourselves and Eric moved away so that we girls could dry our clothes. The majority of the time was silent as we sat by the fire simply staring into it to attempt to burn away the foul images that we had seen. Tears continued to flow from my eyes trying to wrap my head around why that man took his own life. I just couldn't understand why anyone would take the life of another so needlessly, let alone their own.

The fire soon began to form itself into images that I longed for. The faces of Gruffi, Zummi, Grammi, Cubbi, Tummi, Gusto, and other gummi bears. It began to drive me insane, the loneliness began to overflow until I started to hear a small grinding sound, reminding me of Grammi grinding oats and grains to make her famous bread and cookie dough. It took me some time to realize that the grinding sound wasn't in my head but echoing in the distance from our location. The empty caves allowed the sound of grinding to carry for miles and miles. We eventually put our clothes back on still damp and followed the grinding sound eventually reaching the source of the sound. The sound echoed in the gummi water reserve and purification system that Gruffi discovered back in the past while I was a preteen. The water still ran perfectly clean and pure as ever before and was delicious to our parched lips as we drank. There was no need to leave it now, its destination had collapsed completely and now even the village was probably obliterated by now. So we drank deep from the pure waters and Luna even noticed some fish swimming in the waters. She easily caught three with her swift paws but still had a hard time managing to hold onto the slippery things. The sound of grinding still continued to echo through the area but was ever closer. I took with me a bottle of gummi berry juice in case it was necessary but all I found was an old man grinding some bread like Grammi used to do. I was about to go back to the group until I noticed the stone that he was using to grind the bread.

The old man had the Time Stone. And he was using it to grind his bread. But, I finally found a means of getting back to my own time and fixing this mess. "Don't be shy little one. Come out into the light so I can see you clearly." The man said to me in his aged and shaky voice. I had no idea that he knew that I was there. I hesitated before beginning to move. "I could hear you splashing in the water back there. I may be old, but this place echoes well enough for anyone to hear. If you wish to tell your friends that I'm here as well. It's been quite a while since I have had some company." Still startled, I turned to call for the others to join. It wasn't long until all of us gathered around, drying our clothes on a clothes line that he had set up for us. He also provided blankets to us and continued to grind his bread. Rose eventually noticed me staring at the round stone that he was using and asked me, "Is that it? Is that the time stone you were talking about?" She was trying to whisper but the old man was right, the place echoed every syllable. "What's a 'time stone'?" The old man then asked us after hearing the echo. My mind raced with explanations that I could possibly use to try and achieve the stone without causing the man to discover its power and possibly use it for his own purposes and leave me here trapped in this horrid future. "It's the last thing we need to defeat Igthorn." Rose piped in. I turned to her with a surprised look, same as the old man. "It'll never work." The man responded and continued to grind his bread with the stone. "You don't know that." Selina said to him in her kind and soothing voice. "They never work. I've seen folks go into the city and never come back out. Igthorn is just too powerful." The man solemnly explained to us.

"What if we could go back and stop him?" Eric said with all seriousness. Now the old man was intrigued. "And how do you plan on doing that? Time travel?" He asked with sarcasm. Eric simply nodded slowly keeping his serous gaze fixed on the man. The man then continued to grind his bread and simply laughed, "Now I'd like to see that." "Let me see that stone and we'll show you." Eric challenged. "Get me another grinding stone and y'all can have this one." Was his answer. Our little group simply passed gazes from one member to another astonished by the old man's request.

We searched the grounds for anything that we could use for another grinding stone with no luck for some time until Rose discovered some smooth enough stones in the bottom of the stream. She waded into the ice cold water until she located one that was of a decent size and picked it up to carry back to the old man. It weighed about seven pounds so it was easy to carry and she presented it to the old swindler.

I looked all around for a good stone to present to him until the sound of the waterfall stopped completely. I was confused at first until I took a look at the waterfall from off of the enormous water wheel near the back of the area. The wheel had stopped and the water was suspended in mid air. I looked around only to find Eric and Ella frozen stiff as if they were statues. Worried about both of them I made my way over only to find three rocks also suspended in mid air behind them with both of them looking like they had just tossed those ricks behind t eventually found all of my friends in the same manner, Rose frozen while carrying a stone back toward the old man, Luna frozen while climbing some ivy, and Selina frozen while using her shuriken to actually carve a new grinding stone. Still utterly confused, I made my way back to the old man only to find him gone, simply vanished into thin air with only torn clothing hovering in mid air looking as if they had been flung off just as he was leaving in a hurry.

I was beginning to worry as I heard a voice echo through the area in which it seemed time had stopped. "This is interesting. Why aren't you affected by the stone's ability to manipulate time?" The voice was nearly similar to Eric's only it was less kind sounding. "Who are you?" I called out while looking in random directions, trying to find the source of the voice.


	25. Chapter 25: Time locked

Chapter 25: Time locked

The air fell silent as the area once filled with noise of water and machinery silenced, even the sounds of flapping wings from nearby birds ceased. Without all of the noise, I could almost swear my words would echo as if I was in a canyon. But no echo came off of the walls. Dead silence fell after my initial question. It felt as if even time itself had come to a complete stop until the hairs on my entire back stood on ends, sending a wave of sensations through my spine and alerting me of impending danger. I quickly spun around only to see a middle aged man thrusting a knife at me. I shifted my body to the left to avoid his attack but had my left shoulder lightly cut by the blade. As I gazed at my new wound, I noticed that even my blood was halted from ever leaving it.

I turned my gaze back to my assailant and noticed the large round stone in his left hand and a switchblade in his right. The time stone in his left hand was glowing with one of the symbols lit up brighter than the rest. I still had no idea what any of those symbols meant but right now I had a good guess. "Wait, you stopped time?" I yelled to the assassin. He was clearly an assassin because he wore a similar outfit to the others that I had seen. "It's how I became an elite assassin so fast. All I do is pause time while I take out my mark and then start time again to allow the poor shmuck to die where he stands. No one even knew what happened. My question is how come you're not frozen in time?" I, not knowing anything of the workings of time, was unable to come up with an answer, "I... I... don't know." Now my mind was on another problem, did this guy become an assassin **by** the use of the time stone or does he actually have the skills to back up actual combat? I was hoping the prior and judging by his first strike, it was a safe bet. My only problem was that I never personally killed someone before. However, I never thought that he would be as cruel as his next move.

He paced around using his knife as a pointing tool and flipping it up and down like he was speaking with his hand, "You know we **could** go right into combat with each other and prove just how big of amateurs we truly are, but I think I have a better idea." He apparently paced himself over to where Luna was frozen in time and aimed his knife at her throat. "Now I'm sure you care for the safety of your friends so I'll give you a simple choice. Either surrender and face execution, or one by one I kill your friends while frozen in time. What do you say?" He said it so nonchalantly that it made me mad. He then pressed the knife closer to her throat and I gave into my fears, "No wait!" I called to him. With no other options, I lowered my head in defeat and solemnly asked him, "Can I at least say goodbye to them before we go?" My request somehow confused him because he lowered his knife with a dumbfounded look on his face. He then stepped away and answered, "Sure, I might be underhanded, but I know how it feels to never see your family again. You have five minutes, but any funny business and I kill them all." "I was now curious to ask him about his statement but I knew that he controlled the entire situation so I walked over to Luna to see if he had cut the skin on her throat and to bid her goodbye before leaving. I took a good look at her neck before grabbing her right paw. Somehow, she now was able to move the moment that I touched her. She blinked twice and startled me when she began to turn her head. The moment my paw stopped touching her, she froze immediately back in her stasis. Luckily that the man with the time stone didn't see since he had turned away to walk over to Rose and blatantly stare at her cleavage with a perverted grin on his face.

An idea then came to me, I placed my paw over Luna's mouth and she instantly was able to move again. I was still confused but now I had a plan to get the time stone away from him. "Luna." I whispered as softly as I could. She shifted her eyes to look at me and I asked, "Do you still have that bottle of gummi berry juice that I gave you?" She silently nodded piecing together that we were all in danger and to be as discreet as possible. "Good, drink it at the same time that I drink mine." I said placing her paw onto my shoulder while I dug into my holding bag and grabbed a bottle for myself. One at a time to keep from breaking contact, we pulled the cork off of the bottles and chugged down the purple liquid. The rush of power and the loosening of her muscles came as quite a shock to Luna but she stayed vigilant to follow my every move and command. I held onto her paw tightly and tossed the bottle aside with Luna discarding her own. The bottles froze in mid air once they left our grasps and I knelt down to lunge at the man with the time stone.

"You know I think that I'll date this one later as long as she doesn't realize..." He began to say until he turned toward me and noticed Luna and I lunging speedily at him. He was too late to react as we both smashed into his gut headlong literally lifting him off of the ground as we sped by. His grip was tremendous as he never dropped the time stone or his knife until the three of us smashed into a wall and Luna and I simply bouncing off of it in another direction. The moment the stone struck the ground, its spell wore off and time began moving again. Sensing that something was wrong, the others turned around to see the 'old man' in his true form. I then released Luna's paw and bounced off of the nearest wall in my direction and sped back toward him and snagged the time stone from the floor just as the formula wore off causing me to lose my bounce and sending me rolling along the rocky ground with the stone in my grasp. I had enough momentum to roll right into the creek which was deep enough to force me to swim back to the surface to gasp for air. By the time I swam to shore, Eric was there to offer his hand to help me out and I noticed that Selina and Ella all had their shuriken weapons aimed at him, effectively keeping him on the ground. Luna made Rose blush with anger by telling her that he was staring at her and drooling. Chills began to run through my entire body as I once again found myself soaking wet. Eric pulled me out of the creek and smiled at me with his usual kind expression, only this time I thought that I could detect a hint of pride. "Good job. You finally got it back." He congratulated me. I recalled the man's words to me and I called back to him hoping that he had regained consciousness, "What did you mean when you said 'you knew what it feels like to never see your family again'?" He turned to look at me with a flustered defeat on his face and said, "I killed them." He then picked up his knife from off of the ground and lunged at Selina. Selina reacted and thrust her blade through his gut and out of his back. Selina was shocked at his careless desperation because his face clearly suggested that he never saw that coming coupled with pain and regret, his arm still extended with the knife clearly aimed at Selina's throat and falling an entire foot short of its target.

Watching another recklessly attempt to take someone else's life I felt sick to my stomach and fell to my knees and actually began to dry heave. Coughing and nearly choking on my own throat, I continued asking myself, 'Why? Why do these people need to simply die? For what cause do people die?" These questions and more ran a race though my head and each lap made it ache more and more, so much in fact that I fainted and collapsed to the ground.


	26. Chapter 26: Reverse resonance

Chapter 26: Reverse resonance

I awoke later, wrapped in a blanket with my clothes drying over another bonfire. I could smell some of our rations cooking nearby but could feel the many deaths that I had witnessed still tear at my soul. "Hey, are you alright now?" Eric's voice said to me from near my foot. I turned to look at him and sat up wrapping the blanket around my furry body to keep warm. I tried to tell him that I was alright but my nose suddenly was being tickled by an unseen force, causing me to sneeze. "Well, serves you right for being reckless like that." Luna said from near the fire. She revealed herself to Erick's right side and sat down close to me. "So that was gummi berry juice, huh?" She asked recalling the fight. "Yah." Was all I could say back to her. Trying to cheer me up, she responded, "It kind of tastes sort of like blueberries with a little bit of blackberry to it." I snickered slightly and nodded back in agreement. She then fell solemn and stared at the ground for approximately three minutes of silence. "So, you're going to use the time stone to go back and fix all of this soon?" She asked me sadly. I looked at her with a kind of sorrow in my own eyes. I may not know much about the workings of time, but even I could figure out what going back would mean. "If you do, then none of this would happen. And I would never exist. All of **this** would never have existed." I could see the tears begin to form from within her eyes. She truly cared about the life that she lived and I, myself never wanted to take that away. But I also knew that if I stayed here, the gummi bears would eventually become extinct. Neither of us could live forever and there was no way that two female's could procreate together. Without another male gummi bear, our once great species would literally become just a memory.

I honestly never thought of the adverse consequences of going back and stopping Igthorn from acquiring the time stone. It certainly was a heavy subject and I now bore the weight of that burden. Tears began welling up in my own eyes from the overwhelming guilt from wanting to go back and change things. Eric also looked at me with his kind eyes, and even they held in them a kind of sadness from the thought of never meeting me or possibly never being born. "You suffered from the misuse of this damn stone." He said. "But because of the stone I found many good things. I found you, Luna, Rose your sister and even Selina. I've begun to see you all like a family and now, I am faced with the choice of destroying all of that. I can't. I just can't." I began sobbing, covering my face with both of my paws. Eric crawled over to my side and wrapped his arms around my head to comfort me. I wrapped my arms around his waist the best I could and bawled my eyes out on his rib cage. Luna sat by feeling slightly guilty for making me cry like that but at the same time, still scared of ceasing to exist. No matter what I did, someone was doomed and all of us could be doomed if I go back to the past and fail to stop Igthorn.

Suddenly, I felt something be slid under my paw while I was crying. At the same time, the rest of the group joined in with a big group hug with Rose blocking my view of what was placed under my paw. Suddenly a familiar light surrounded us and my mind began to panic. I wasn't ready to make a decision but it seemed that I was relieved of my choice. I thought for sure that I would never see Eric or the others again until the light died back down and faded away. The hug was then broken and I found myself in a fully functional water source for the glen. "What happened?" Eric asked clearly confused to see his surroundings not in disarray. An upbeat tune could be heard being whistled through the entrance tunnel echoing to our position, and suddenly the figure emerged from the tunnel within seconds. Gruffi Gummi stopped whistling the moment his eyes laid upon our little group. Clearly nervous about intruders he slowly spun around to try and make an exit until I shouted out in nostalgic joy, "Gruffi?" Recognizing my voice, he slowly turned back around to see if his mind was playing tricks on him. I slowly took steps forward as my eyes began to tear up once again only this time out of joy. "Wait, Sunni? But, I thought I left you back in the glen. How did you even get here before me if you followed?" All I could do was sob while hugging him tightly, I just couldn't stop myself and my tears just wouldn't stop. I was sure that he was now completely confused but I just couldn't stop crying.

"Sunny, what's wrong?" He asked slightly embarrassed from the hug. "Did they hurt you or something?" He then asked defensive and slightly angry. I had to force myself to calm down enough to speak and clear up the situation. I pulled away from Gruffi and choked, "No... no they didn't. They helped me. They're from the future." Then I thought about that statement, "And so am I." Gruffi looked at me like he thought I was crazy and then looked at our little motley crew, examining them like Gruffi always used to do in my memories. His distrust was probably slightly annoying to the rest of them, but I was just about to break down with joy once again. My heart swelled up with bursting emotions that I thought I'd never feel for my own kind again. I was happy, confused, embarrassed and sad all at the same time. I turned back toward my friends remembering that they didn't even belong here in the past and when we fixed everything, they would simply disappear and be forgotten, the same with my experiences and memories, and this me also would fade away into nothing.

I noticed Rose holding the time stone in her hands like she would hold an old video reel and decided to introduce them to him. "Gruffi," I said to him and gestured toward each person in turn, "This is Rose, Selina, Eric, his sister Ella and Luna." I then turned back to him and said in all seriousness, "And you might not believe me, but I most likely am outside at the castle with Calla right now." And that, he did by the clear look on his face he thought that I was losing my mind, but still accepted them and silently waved to say 'hi'.

While we were escorted back, after Gruffi performed and taught curious Eric maintenance to the water mill, Rose approached me and leaned to softly explain to me, "We don't know what will happen if you end up meeting your past self." I snidely turned back to her and responded, "That's nice to know now. It was **your** plan to slip the stone under my paw and group hug me." "I didn't think that it actually would bring **all** of us with you. I thought that it would work on only the one **touching** the stone." She retorted defensively. "Ooh, look at that. You were wrong for once." I lightly snapped back at her trying to enunciate the fact that I didn't like her tricking me like that. "Excuse me. I'm only **human**." She then snapped back and stood straight up to ignore me. The reality was that now she had gotten me thinking. What would happen if I met myself? Would I need to come up with another identity or should I try to explain my situation and hopefully keep it within their understanding when I barely understood it myself. We were soon going to find out.


	27. Chapter 27: Paradoxical predicament

Chapter 27: Paradoxical predicament

Moving our way through the fully intact glen, I recounted the memory I had of the place caving in from a massive bomb. Shuddering from the near death experiences from my journey through time, I continued to walk, watching the time stone for any reaction. The last thing that I wanted was to accidently transport myself even farther into the past or future. The problem Rose brought up to me was also burning at my mind. What would happen if I met my past self? Would existence itself collapse, would I disappear or even my past self, or would nothing happen at all? I would soon find out as I caught a silhouette attempting to stay ahead of us. Knowing Selina and Ella, I turned to see if they noticed, and sure enough they kept their eyes on the moving figure's every move, ready to strike it down if need be. Suddenly the silhouette tripped over a small rock and rolled into the light of the torches. I stood in shock the moment Cubbi stood up from his little stumble. "Aw, and I was doing so well too." He said to himself while dusting off his dirty legs. He looked like he had hit a growth spurt and was beginning to catch up to my height. His dark pink fur and his red and white stripped jester's tunic and blue hat with a red wing-tip feather brought back fond memories of when we used to argue and compete with each other as brother and sister. Again, I couldn't hold back any of my tears or emotions and I fell to my knees and began crying with joy.

"Uh, what's wrong Sunni?" Cubbi asked, clearly worried about me and thinking that he did something wrong. "Hey," Eric asked placing a hand on my right shoulder, trying to help me calm down. I turned my head to meet his kind eyes and stood back up while wiping my eyes and answering Cubbi, "It's nothing. I'll tell you all later. Sorry." Both Cubbi and Gruffi looked at each other in confusion and Gruffi shrugged his shoulders to make his confusion known to the little cub. We continued to travel down to the quick cars, which was a sight for the others to see considering that Eric, Luna, and Rose had only seen it in disarray. Their jaws fell in awe once the view of a fully constructed and functional quick tunnel track came into sight. Still remembering the tracks well, I asked Gruffi, "Would you mind taking Rose, Ella, and Selina with you? I'll meet you in a second quick car with Eric and Luna." "That's a good idea." He responded with his slight lisp every time he pronounced an 's' in his words. Every time he spoke, it sounded as if he was forcing all the air out of his lungs all at once, or at least trying to sound like an Italian mob boss minus the accent. "I'll take Cubbi with me. He's in big trouble for wandering off." Gruffi exclaimed glaring at the dark pink cub. Cubbi simply grinned bashfully at Gruffi, realizing that he disobeyed his elder brother.

"So, what day is it today?" I asked Gruffi hoping that I wasn't too close to that horrible night. "It's a week till your birthday, why?" He answered. A feeling of doom nearly set in as I tried to understand and remember what I was doing a week before my eighteenth birthday. My mind also raced with thoughts and questions on how I was going to stop the disaster. I then turned to look at Eric and soon found myself wondering if I even **should** stop it from happening.

We soon reached the quick tunnel platform leading back to Gummi Glen from the water source. We climbed in and were off in two separate cars, Gruffi in front and Luna, Eric and I behind. Memories of the last time I rode the quick tunnels with Eric, Luna and Rose ran through my head, making me feel both nervous and nostalgic. "So, what are you going to do if you meet yourself?"

It wasn't long until we stopped at the Glen's launching platform and the first car piled out. Ella stumbled out and collapsed to her knees, covering her mouth with her only hand and looking like she could be sick. I halted the car that we were riding in skillfully before it even had a chance to collide with the car in front of it, applying the brakes gently at first to slow the car to a stop. We then climbed out of the quick car and continued in toward the glen. Soon would be the moment of truth and I would have a lot of explaining to do, especially to Zummi. After entering the glen Gruffi led us toward the kitchen where Grammi Gummi spent the majority of her time, cooking away. "Guess who I found wandering around far from home." Gruffy huffed trying to sound macho. "I was wondering where you went, Gruffi. I need help in the kitchen." Grammi huffed back. "Sorry Grammi, I'm not certified for the kind of help you need." Gruffi retorted snidely, and then Grammi responded by smacking him hard on the head with a large wooden spoon. Oh how I missed their quarreling after my tragic experiences. I couldn't help but simply watch them with joy in my heart, even though they were fighting and calling each other names. A couple more tears came to my eyes and I attempted to wipe them away before Grammi and Gruffi noticed. That attempt met with an utter failure.

"Oh, what's wrong child?" Grammi asked in her kindest tone. She then noticed the rest of the group. "Who are your friends? And, who is the new gummi bear? She looks almost like you." I wiped away the rest of my tears before answering her questions. "Sorry Grammi, I'll tell you 'what's wrong' later. Right now I want to introduce you to Eric Lohengrin, his sister Ella, Selina Alumsdale, Rosemary Lavender, and the new gummi bear is named Luna." "Welcome to Gummi Glen, Luna. It's always good to have another member in our little family." Grammi answered without even passing a thought as to asking where she may have come from. She then turned to the rest and shook all of their hands while kindly greeting them and saying some things about be probably being 'more than enough trouble'. She then turned back to me and said, "Come to think of it, weren't you going to Dunwyn Castle to have Calla take your measurements for the dress she is making for your birthday next week?" Memories of that dark night flashed through my mind, remembering my birthday present that Calla wanted to give me before she died. The memory caused my knees to buckle and my head to start pounding. The pain flooded back to me like a dam wall being smashed open and the waters came raging through. I gripped the sides of my head with my paws and screamed as loud as I could to try and drown the memories with no luck. Then, complete darkness.


	28. Chapter 28: Repeat history

Chapter 28: Repeat history

I awoke again to the smell of Grammi's fresh baked bread and some tomato soup. My head had stopped throbbing but my heart once again felt heavy in my chest. I turned to my right to see Eric once again sleeping in a chair at my bedside but my vision also beheld a small ball of yellow fur and green fabric in a far corner across my vision. At first I thought that Luna may have gotten curious and wore one of my tunic dresses, but she then shifted so that I got a good look at her face. It was **me** from the past that I remembered. She was curled up in a ball lying on a blanket near the corner of the room. I reached over and gently shook Eric awake and his light groan somehow awoke my younger self. I knew that I was a light sleeper but seeing me wake up to a small groan was uncanny. Eric and younger Sunni both stirred awake and lifted their heads and I looked at Eric with slight embarrassment and asked, "I fainted again didn't I?" Eric looked back at me with his kind and gentle gaze and answered, "No one blames you. A lot has happened in these past few hours. We're surprised that you didn't collapse the moment you saw Gruffi." Rather than getting flustered at his remark, I turned to look at myself nearly four months behind in age. She just watched and gawked at me, obviously a thousand intense questions circling inside of her head. I looked to Eric for some answers but all that he told me was, "We tried explaining the situation to the others but Gruffi refuses to allow us to say a word after seeing you faint like that, and he insisted even more when this one came home." I chuckled lightly at the memory of Gruffi's normal reactions toward the strange and unusual. "That's Gruffi for you. He only trusts a member of his family. Even other gummi bears aren't safe from him at times." "Clearly." Eric retorted. Suddenly, we heard a light chuckle come from younger Sunni.

After a few minutes of gathering my wits and calming my anxieties about seeing my dead family once more, Eric and young Sunni, who I began calling 'Sunn" for short, escorted me out into the main hall of Gummi Glen, the area where the upside down dome was located. I looked up and saw the small wild fish swim by and even sometimes get curious and investigate the piece of class with wood and gold lining, separating the glass panels to increase its overall strength. "So, are you going to tell us who you really are and why you look so much like our little Sunni?" Gruffi huffed at me. "More importantly, how did you come to acquire the ancient sime tone? Eh, uh 'time stone'. The only mention of it is in the Great Book of Gummi." Zummi added to Gruffi's statement. Eric looked at me just as curious and I found myself cornered into recounting my nightmare.

After I told the story of the soon-to-be destruction and murder of the gummies of gummi glen, I found everyone that hadn't come from the future staring at me bewildered. Gruffi was the first one to snap out of his dumbfounded state, "Come on, you really expect us to believe that tall tale?" Before I could start defending myself, Zummi stepped in, "It's possible Gruffi. She does have the time stone. And she looks exactly like Sunni." "Well if it is true then Igthorn has a lot to answer for. Killing us is one thing, but letting people like that 'Isaac Lavender' character create a clone of Sunni and let him treat her like dirt is completely cruel, even for him. And I only have one thing to say about that." Gruffi huffed again. "And what would that be?" Grammi asked while reading her rolling pin to punish him for any harsh words. "What, exactly, is a 'clone'?" Gruffi asked in pure curiosity and confusion. "That's a good question, Gruffi." Zummi stated and turned back to me for an explain. "A clone is an exact replica of another being by using DNA splicing to replicate the being in question. Normally the clone grows at the exact rate and can take up to nine months for fetal development. However, my husband used an aging serum to speed up the aging process and bring her up to Sunni's age. The downside is that the aging serum destabilizes the clone's genetic structure and dramatically decreases its life span. Without a regular dose of stabilizer, the clone then only retains a few years at the most to live." The moment Rose opened her eyes after giving her explanation, she found herself being stared at by even more confused looks. "I think I get it." Cubbi slowly said trying to bring down the level of awkwardness. "Look, Luna is a living copy of Sunni. In all rights, she is technically Sunni's daughter and sister at the same time." Eric translated for Rose. "So what was that about 'only a few years to live'?" Gusto asked clearly concerned about Luna. "That's how long I have to live." Luna answered. "Since I was aged by force, my life span drastically decreased. I'll only live till the age of twenty or so." Gusto then walked over to the poor gummi clone and embraced her in a sympathetic hug, trying to keep himself from crying more than her. "Huh, three Sunnis. We're not gonna here you two talk at the same time constantly are we?" Gruffi asked in another one of his moods. He crossed his arms and attempted to turn away from us while remaining where he stood. Grammi was about to clobber him with the rolling pin until Zummi answered, Most likely not Gruffi, even though they are the same gummi, they are from different points in their own timeline. The things that our Sunni thinks, says and does will be similar to the future Sunni's thoughts, words and actions, but in reality, she has already done all of that before. She'll just have her own thoughts while the younger Sunni has yet to think them... I think." "And because the future Sunni's here now, that'll change how the younger Sunni views and thinks. Inevitably they'll seem like identical twins." Rose added. "I've never had a twin before!" I heard myself say. "Trust me," Luna piped in after Gusto let go of her, "It's the coolest thing in the world."

I smiled at my younger self remembering how naive I used to be, having my biggest worries about the latest styles of clothing for the humans and finding Calla time to hang out with me. I also realized in the back of my mind that she needed to go to the future in order to maintain the series of events. "So, if there are two Sunni's, does that mean that there could be two time stones?" Eric asked. "An even better question, where did that stone come from?" Gruffi retorted in his usual tough-guy act. "The Great Book said that the sime tone, eh the 'time stone', was created by an ancient gummi wizard. No one knows how because he had a habit of casting random spells in his sleep. It had the power to control time itself and power like that was too great for any mortal to hold, so he locked it away in a secret location. Apparently, the three symbols on the stone represent the past, the present and the future." "Does that happen often?" Rose asked Zummi. "Ehdia, does what happen often?" He asked her slightly confused. "Mixing up words as you speak, it's a form of dyslexia." She answered. The two of them then went off on their own little conversation with Zummi asking whether or not dyslexia was good or bad.

"So, what do you want to do on our first day as sisters?" Luna asked my younger self. "Why don't we do each others' hair? You seem to have more than me." She responded. "You two go on ahead, I want to catch up with everyone." I told them. Young Sunni led Luna back to her room while Gusto and I watched as they made their way through the glen. "What's that thing that she is wearing?" Gusto asked implying to her jacket. "That is called a jacket Gusto. That particular one is made from leather or animal skin." I told him. He shuddered slightly at the mention of its material but understood none-the-less. "I'm pretty sure that you could go on about how tough it looks." I teased him. He chuckled slightly and retorted, "Maybe we should get Gruffers to wear it, huh." I began laughing at his little joke, simply being able to talk to another gummi bear was enough to nearly make me cry again, but I decided to hold back my tears. The next question was, now what was I supposed to do? I knew exactly what was going to happen in six days but if I stopped it, all of my new friends would vanish along with me and any memory of any of this. The choice still remained, save the past, or save the future.


	29. Chapter 29: Darkest hour

Chapter 29: Darkest hour

My younger self and Luna seemed to hit it off as close sisters immediately. Luna learning so much about gummi bears by pestering the elder bears with questions. It was great to see Gruffi get so flustered by her barrage of questions, even the rest of them were still getting used to her ignorance. It had been three days since we arrived back in the glen and Eric and the gang now had their own temporary rooms within, despite the uncomfortable size of the beds. By the day time they searched for the ancestor that sold Igthorn the location of the time stone and hoped to intercept him before Igthorn, despite my protests of changing the course of the future. During that time, I told stories to Cubbi, my younger self, Gusto, and once in a while, Gruffi. I was afraid to go outside of the glen and risk Calla being confused and realizing her grim fate. Every choice I made constantly hurt me in the heart with the knowledge of the immediate future and the people that I could loose from those choice. I had to make my younger self even hold off on telling Calla any of the stories I recounted. I still had no idea what to do in this unique situation.

Time flew and with no success as to finding Eric's ancestor, I was running out of time to make the hardest decision of my personal existence. It was the day of my eighteenth birthday and my younger self walked around excited, but there was an obvious feel of dread in the back of her eyes. In fact, there was a sense of doom around the entire place even though everyone did their best to put on a brave face. The first birthday party was held in the glen with the other gummi bears, Calla had planned on throwing a second miniature party for her to present her present that night. Everything was turning out nearly exactly like it did when I went to the future. But, I just wasn't sure if I could force myself to go through it once again, yet at the same time, I didn't want to lose my new friends. "Time, you are a cruel thing." I whispered to myself with a sigh.

Little did I know was that eventually, Eric did find his ancestor just a mere mile away from the glen. The merchant almost looked exactly like him with only a few differences such as hair style and clothes. They also persuaded him to give up the secret of the location of the time stone. They proceeded back toward the glen with high hopes that their future could be changed for the better until Rose stopped and began to think about how different it would be. Because of their interference, Eric's ancestor would not be responsible of divulging the secrets to a tyrant and thus he would not feel obligated to help out a lost gummi bear. And without Igthorn, Rose would never have been forced to marry Isaac, and not feel flustered enough to confide in Sunni and thus never paying attention to her feelings and fears. Second guessing their course of actions She was going to regret never meeting and befriending such a beautiful species and such a strong friend.

Selina, simply perched herself in the branches of the glen tree, gazing at the clouds and contemplating on what her life would be like without the events that happened during this time and wondered at the impact that the survival of a single creature had on many lives. She recalled the moment that the little town she had created heard news of a living gummi bear. She remembered the hope returning to the eyes of the adults and wonder shining in the eyes of the children. 'I wish that I could stay here and see how these creatures are so wonderful. We humans really could learn so much from them.'

Ella searched with her brother and found herself wondering whether or not her family would be together if these events had occurred and also wondering if she would have both arms and eyes. She gripped her missing arm the moment the thoughts passed through her mind. Eric himself wondered what his life would be like if he had never met Sunni and began regretting ever trying to stop the events but at the same time, wanted to desperately make her happy again.

Luna on the other hand, thought constantly of her existence. 'Will I even exist if the future is altered? Will the gummi bears, if their species survives, discover cloning technology and strive to create me? Will I even **be** me?' "Are you alright, Luna?" She heard younger Sunni ask. Luna snapped out of her moment of deep thought and turned to the clueless female gummi with a slight surprise and startle. Her expression relaxed as she made her final decision to not worry about existence and simply make the moments she had here count. "I'm fine. I was just thinking." She answered and then slid off her leather jacket. "Here, do you want to try it on?" Luna asked as young Sunni's eyes lit up. "Are you sure?" The young innocent gummi bear asked whilst reaching for it gingerly. "It might be a bit large but, yah. Go ahead and try it. See how you look." Luna insisted.

It took some time for Eric and them to return to the glen with the news and their decision to traverse to the stone's location and grab it before Igthorn. But when they did, they relayed the news back to me and my heart sank with the thought of losing my new friends, and even Eric. I eventually agreed to accompany them on the journey for the time stone but I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach as I readied myself for the trip. We departed in twenty minutes from then and proceeded eastward to locate the time stone, Eric, Luna, Rose and I. We left Ella and Selina back at the glen to protect everyone while we were gone. It wouldn't help or change anything.

Two hours into the trip, it had began raining heavily and night time had fallen over the glen and the same hell that happened to me happened to my younger self. Ella and Selina were distracted by two ogres that appeared at the glen entrance and then the events occurred once more exactly as they occurred before. The spider machines flooded the halls silently with only minute scraping noises as they crept into the kitchen and the hall of the great book. Gruffi and Grammi never saw it coming. One quick thrust through their stomachs made them both collapse to the ground together and spill Grammi's recent batch of gummi berry juice, the hot broth scalding them as they lie helpless and dying quickly. Zummi being run through as he explained the mechanics of the time stone that was described in the great book to my younger self and her escaping death nimbly and frightened while watching her comrades die in front of her, inevitably making her way to the time stone in Igthorn's clutches and using the quick tunnels to escape. Within fifteen minutes of the start of the raid, we heard Igthorn's defeated outcry echoing through the rolling hills of the English countryside. After which the images of them dead surrounded me once more and my fears over came me. However, I had no time to faint as an ogre jumped us from behind a nearby tree and swung his massive fist, knocking Rose clean off of her feet and careening thirteen feet away from us. Once she skidded to a stop, she simply lay on the ground, unconscious on her back. Seeing the attacks coming, Eric nimbly dodged the massive hulk's fists as I reached into my supply bag for a bottle of my own gummi berry juice. "Eric, catch!" I called to him as I threw the bottle in his direction. Much to my horror, Eric never caught the bottle, instead the ogre plucked it out of the sky moments before Eric could, and he then swiftly pulled out the cork and drank the dark liquid. 'No!' I thought to myself as the ogre felt the massive power flow through his muscles. He then slammed his fist into the ground in front of Eric, causing him to lose his balance by the sheer shockwave let alone the crumbling ground beneath his feet. The ogre then seized the opportunity and planted his super strong fist into Eric's gut and flung him fifty feet.

"Eric!" I called out feeling guilty and worried at the same time. "Come on ya big ugly excuse of a genetic anomaly." I suddenly heard Luna call to the ogre. "Luna what are you doing?" I yelled to her. She then showed me in her left paw the last bottle of gummi berry juice she apparently had swiped from me just before Eric had gotten walloped. It was empty when she showed it to me. "Don't worry sis. I got it all covered." She reassured me. The ogre came in swinging his massive fists and Luna simply bounced away like any gummi bear would have, luring him into comfortable conditions to fight the massive bruit and even the odds. I reached back into my shoulder bag and pulled out my version of the time stone, mostly to reassure myself that it was still there, when Luna flew out of the forested area of where she had led the ogre. She skidded to a stop in front of my feet bleeding from her nose and mouth and lying unconscious. However, the ogre didn't emerge completely unharmed. Buried deep into his heart, was Luna's chain knife. Staggering out of the lightly forested area where he and Luna fought he faced me and finally collapsed after taking his final breath.


	30. Chapter 30: Master of the time stone

Chapter 30: Master of the time stone

It was all over in moments. My family died twice in my own personal timeline, my friends unconscious and or dead before my eyes, and all because of me. Because this stone existed at all, my life has been a living hell beyond all hells. Unable to contain my frustration any longer, I hugged the stone once again and screamed at the top of my lungs, tears once again flowing with the rain. Suddenly the stone's markings began glowing a bright pale green light this time instead of the pale blue light that usually envelopes all of those it sends through time. "What's going on?" I asked in alarm and confusion. The light slowly faded and I found myself in a cave with silver walls. The cave looked as if it was dug out by modern machines and yet still had an air of medieval workmanship about it. It felt almost as if the past and the present existed in the same second. The cave stretched on for what seemed thirty yards and then branched off into five other directions and I could only guess that the other halls divided somewhere along the line into a veritable maze. Echoing in one particular branch of halls a heavy breathing sound, like a one hundred and thirty year old man still clinging to life, but tired and bed ridden. Not wanting to get lost, I decided to follow the breathing noise.

It led me through the leftmost corridor and I noticed that as I passed through the pathway and into the next room, the walls and ceiling began to sprout shining, clear crystals that got larger and larger the deeper into the corridor I had gotten. Inside the crystal room, the gems had grown to be about the same size as I and even reflected my image in them. It was incredible to see, but, I had no time to sight see. I continued to follow the raspy breathing noise through another corridor that changed the scenery from crystal to ruby. Then I followed the noise through another corridor that turned the crystals into an aquamarine. The next corridor changed into opal and the next corridor turned sapphire. It was in the next room that I found the source of the breathing noise. The corridor began with shining sapphire crystals that shrank in size the farther through I walked. In the dead center of the hallway the crystals ceased growing and the walls became smooth and bleached white. It was actually hard to find the sides of the walls and I was forced to place my right paw against the wall to keep from veering off course and bumping onto the wall.

Finally making it into the room to where the corridor led me I found what echoed through the walls of the cavern. It was a crippled old man that looked literally skin and bone. He wore what looked like wizard's robes that looked as if they were woven from the very fabric of space with galaxy's free floating and stars twinkling. Various watches and time keeping mechanisms used throughout the ages also free floated in and out of view on various places on his robes, disappearing the moment they reached the hem. He sat on a pearl throne, hunched forward and staring at the floor in front of him, breathing as it his life would soon be extinguished.

"How?" He finally voiced in a failing raspy voice. "Who are you? Where am I?" I asked him but instead of answering me he simply went on a rant. "Why do you still live? You who are guided by destiny. You shall not prevail. I cannot be destroyed by you! I am superior!" I was afraid now. I had figured that he was probably too old and senile to figure out which way was up until he looked at me and spoke my name. "Sunni Gummi." He said as he slowly and weakly lifted his head to gaze at me with his dark red eyes. He then slowly and weakly outstretched his right arm and held it there with the palm of his right hand faced upward as if asking for something. "My time stone. I request you give it back." He demanded with his eyes shifting from red to blue and then green and then back to red in an aurora-like fashion. "What are you?" I gasped. "I am a time wizard, the greatest time wizard of them all, and the creator of the time stone." He answered rather impatiently and egotistically. "But I thought a Great Gummi created the time stone in his sleep." I responded rather confused. "Fool. Only a time wizard can build something as powerful as the time stone. And it can only be forged by utilizing all of his/her magic. Your 'supposed' great gummi merely summoned it from my grasp, stealing it and sealing me in my chambers to rot in my immortality." His story was chilling to me and yet I still had a bad feeling about him. "So, what would you do with the time stone if you had it?" I asked. "With it I could see into the future and shape it to my liking. A vision that I had, before it was cruelly stolen from me, was of a yellow bear time traveler confronting me and destroying my power. I won't let that happen. You will not destroy me! I shall be master of all existence!" Slightly disturbed and frightened I decided to try my hand at sarcasm once more, "Have you been practicing that, because now you just sound insane." "Joke all you like, but you will give me back my time stone so that I can destroy you at last." He huffed at me.

With a threat like that I began fearing for myself and slowly backed away until I pressed myself into the room's wall. "Do you fear me little gummi?" He asked noticing me back away. "You're crazy, is all. If you want to destroy me then tell me why I should just hand you this time stone?" I yelled back in response. "You know that I speak true. Why else would my eyes shift in color and why would my robes be as a piece of time and space itself?" He asked and raised his right arm in mention of his cloak. As he spoke, his figure began to slowly reverse in age. Noticing this, I looked down at the time stone and notices that one of the characters on it was glowing crimson red. "The symbol of the past. This symbol has the power to alter past events and reverse time inflicted upon a being. Holding the time stone my power would seem instantaneous but as it stands now, all I can do is activate it with minimal power. Does this not prove that the time stone is mine to begin with?" His voice began getting more and more youthful as his age reversed. "The closer I am the more power that I can use."

With that tidbit of information, I looked for the nearest exit and ran as fast as I could away from him. It was tough to find the exit as the entire room was perfectly white and didn't show any outline whatsoever. When I finally located the hall that I came in from, I ran away from him as fast as I could. Again, half way through the hallway, the ruby red crystals began protruding out of the walls and ceiling and getting larger the farther through the hall I got. I stopped inside the ruby room when I heard a familiar giggle. My own.


	31. Chapter 31: Cave of crystal

Chapter 31: Cave of crystals

I looked around the room from where I stood to try and find the source of the giggle but it seemed to come from everywhere at once. The largest crystals came from the ceiling of the center of the room. This crystal nearly touched the floor, making it nearly six feet in length and two feet in width. Surrounding it were other crystals spreading out in a similar manner to the way the dirt kicks out from an underground explosion. Clusters of large four foot crystals were also scattered around the room and I finally noticed my own reflection in each of them. Making my way to one of the crystals I found that my reflection did the exact same until I reached the crystal and my reflection balled up its right paw into a fist and trust it at my face. It was a mere reflection and couldn't hurt me, but from across the room I heard my own voice say, "What the hell was that?" Shocked, I turned around and began approaching the direction of the voice until I heard from another direction, "That bitch! That was uncalled for." More of my reflections began acting seemingly on their own. I then heard a man's voice talk to me through the echo's of the cavern. "Like it. These are the crystals of possibilities. The reflections in each of the crystals show you a possible choice or reaction you could possibly use in a given current state of mind. The rubies represent anger, for the color red." I guessed that it was the time wizard. One of my reflections blurted out, "Come on out you little bastard. I'll kick your scrawny ass." Another of my reflections simply gestured the middle digit of its left paw separate from its fist in replacement of a human's middle finger and I decided to try and run to a friendlier chamber and less vulgar.

I passed through another chamber where the crystals turned to topaz. There, I could hear my reflections cower in fright, most of them falling on the ground and hugging the time stone and shivering. I continued running through and into the next room where the crystals turned back into sapphire, where my reflections all seemed sad about something. The center crystal was the one that caught my attention when she began bawling her eyes out and eventually cried out Eric's name. It was apparent that this represented sadness and I've felt plenty of that throughout this little adventure, so I continued on to the next room. I make it to a room where the crystals turned opal in color. The bright pearl white made the room almost gleam and I noticed that the reflections inside the crystals all had smiles on their faces, some of hope, some simply giggling with laughter and others simply happy for no apparent reason.

If I had a choice, this would be the ideal place to be captured by a madman. I knelt down to rest when my knee hit the time stone and sent it flying into a nearby crystal. The crystal it struck broke off and collapsed to the ground and at the same time the time stone bounced off and cracked in the place where it hit. As I gazed at the crack in the stone, I found myself asking the question, 'What would happen if I destroyed this wretched thing?' Suddenly the wizard's voice, sounding somewhere in his thirties, echoed through the halls, "Go ahead and destroy the stone that lies in front of you. The time stone exists in the past, present and future all at the same time. Even going back and stopping the moment of its creation won't stop it from existing. The only thing that'll happen is that you'll trap yourself inside with me, where we can literally spend eternity wandering the crystal halls."

I certainly didn't want to be trapped in here with this loon, and I didn't even know his name. I closed my eyes desperately trying to think of a solution until one of my reflections giggled, "Well, if it exists in the past present and the future at the same time, what happens if I bring them all together and destroy it?" "Now **that's** an idea." I blurted aloud with my own happiness. I then worked out how the time stone worked in my mind from how it activated in my paws those times. 'The first time it activated was when I needed to get away from those machines. I felt desperate and afraid. The second time was when I was group-hugged by all of my future friends. Then I longed for my family but was torn with the thought of loosing those I currently cared about.' "That's **it**!" I shouted upon realization. I then grabbed the broken crystal with my right paw placed my left paw in the center of the stone and concentrated with every fiber of my being. "What are you doing?" The mage shouted when he saw what I was doing as he turned the corner. He lunged at me to try and stop me until the pale blue light enveloped me and I vanished into what I hoped to be the past, present and future combined.

The space that I found myself in looked endless with an aurora of colors surrounding me in all directions. I was literally weightless through the space and moving at a good clip forward. Taken in awe by my surroundings, a hardly noticed the time wizard behind me until he shouted at me at the top of his lungs. I turned to look and find him a good distance behind me and closing in fast, insanity and bloodlust apparent in his eyes trained on me. In fear, I acted. I took the piece of crystal in my right paw and smashed in as hard as I could into the center of the time stone. Both the crystal and the time stone shattered upon impact and I turned around to see the time wizard writhing in pain behind me as if I had stabbed him in the kidney. In mere moments the wizard began disintegrating into nothingness and I remembered what he had told me before, that his life force was embedded inside the time stone. Meaning, that when it is destroyed properly, so is he. But now I found myself trapped in the merging of all time with it whizzing by me. I thought of Eric and my friends, my gummi family at the glen that I witnessed being destroyed twice. Their smiled flashed through my mind like lightning. All I could think about was them, those I had come to know and love and wished that I could see them all just one more time. I closed my eyes and screamed aloud while letting myself drift through this nexus that I had created when a bright flash of white light enveloped me.


	32. Chapter 32: Your past is my future

Chapter 32: Your past is my future

I awoke suddenly in my bed. I shot upright into a sitting position, remembering it all as a bad nightmare. Panting heavily and sweating profusely, I sat there gathering my wits and calming my nerves, thinking that it all could have been just a dream. Memories of the moments with Eric and the others still ran through my head and my heart felt as if it was about to crumble at the mere thought of never seeing any of them again. Especially Eric. Suddenly, my door slowly opened and I heard two familiar voices arguing with each other. "I still say that you're no gummi. You don't know what it 'the gummi way' even means.' The first voice said in a huff to the other. "Oh, stow it Gruffi. Rose is still trying to figure out what in the world happened. Get off of my back." The second voice sounded all too familiar. The scenario also seemed slightly familiar as a light brown gummi bear with a scar on his right cheek opened the door to my room with a bowl of chicken noodle soup in his right paw. I was shocked to find a gummi bear in front of me rather than a human, but I still recognized his voice and that scar. "Eric?" I gasped upon seeing him. "So you're finally awake." He said being nostalgic. I simply sighed and giggled slightly at his little joke. I leaned back against the headboard of my bed and tried to figure out what happened to the best of my memories.

"A little confused as to why I'm a gummi bear?" He asked approaching me with the soup. "Yah, but I think I like it this way. Now it won't be so awkward when we spend time with each other." I said to him. Before he could come up with a witty retort, I decided to plant another kiss on his now furry lips, effectively silencing him. It took him a split second to relax and kiss me back, all the while Gruffi turned around awkwardly to give us as much privacy as he could, but there were questions that only I could answer. He cleared his throat to catch our attention and then informed me, "When you're ready, we sure could use some help in the glen." He walked out and back toward the main entry in which Eric decided to put down the bowl of soup and help me out of bed and back to meet with the rest of them.

On our way out, we met up with Cubbi who began teasing me with the 'Sunni and Eric, sitting in a tree' rhyme. It was annoying, but at the same time relieving because of my experiences. "Stop it Cubbi. We live in a tree." I corrected him. He simply huffed at me and ran ahead of us. Zummi met up with us as we passed the glen library where we found the great book still on the pedestal. "Sunni, what in the great gummi's happened, one moment we were in the glen getting slaughtered and then suddenly, here we are." He sounded more confused than frantic, but that feeling was still present in his voice. I started retelling my experience with the time wizard and the time nexus that I created after figuring out how the stone worked. He was frightened but intrigued at the same time. We continued to meet the others until we reached the main entry hall. There we gathered so that I could answer any questions they had.

"Sunni, can you explain to me how we suddenly became gummi bears?" Rose asked sternly. She looked gorgeous, even for a gummi bear. She maintained her long hair that became dark lavender as well as her fur was bright lavender. She still wore her lab coat and glared at me with her now violet eyes. Ella apparently regained her arm and eye, even her burn scars had vanished as if they never happened. Her eyes were green and her fur was a glowing gold with blond long hair and gorgeous light brown eyes. Selina was a baby blue gummi bear with dark violet long hair and piercing dark blue eyes. All seemed to be still slightly confused as to how they remembered themselves as human one moment and found themselves gummi bear the next. "Truth be told," I answered bashfully, "I have no idea myself. I think that I may have done it somehow but I don't know." "Time," Zummi interrupted, "Such a mysterious thing. We can guess on how it works for ages and it will always surprise us." "I'd like to not mess with it again, thank-you-very-much." I said relieved and tired. Cubbi then gently tugged on the back of my tunic to get my attention, "Does that mean that you saved us too?" I thought about his question for a few seconds, but no matter how I thought about it, I could not find a true answer. I had no idea of anything that happened before waking up in my bed. So I simply shrugged my shoulders at him. I still say that they aren't real gummi bears!" Gruffi huffed still skeptical about the entire ordeal. "My question is how we all remember everything even though technically it never happened with the time stone destroyed from existence." Zummi stated. The rest of them repeated him in shock, "Destroyed from existence?" I had some explaining to do when Calla entered through the glen door. "Hey Sunni, I've finished your present." She blurted out before noticing the new residents. "Oh, who are they? New gummi bears?" Seeing Calla alive filled my heart with joy that I hadn't felt in a long time. My eyes began to tear up and I ran to hug her. The princess caught me in mid embrace and asked in confusion, "What's wrong Sunni? You're acting like you haven't seen me in years." That quote reminded me of something, I'd been time traveling so much that I had no idea what day I had ended up on.

"Hey, what day is it?" I asked her. "What? It's the day after your birthday. I'm sorry I didn't get your present finished on time for the party, I hope you can forgive me." She answered. She then showed me a dress that was designed for a princess and tailored to my size. I began to tear up again realizing that all of my experiences and memories were no longer going to come to pass and embraced her once again. Eric finally approached the princess and introduced himself and the others. "Much has happened yesterday. I'm Lohengrin, Sunni's new boyfriend." He then pointed to the others in sequence while Calla and I sat in shock at his bold statement. This is my sister Ella, the smartest gummi bear ever known, Rose, Selina and Sunni's sister Luna." Now Calla had heard it all. "Wait, you never told me that you had a sister." All I could do was smile awkwardly at her. She then perked back up and held out my new dress. "Well, now you have something to wear on your first date." My face blushed beat red under my fur while all of the others laughed at my expense.

Climbing a mountain somewhere on another continent, Igthorn sought out a powerful object to take over castle Dunwyn and hopefully destroy us gummi bears. Near the top of the mountain was a cave that led into the mountainside. The cave was short and ended only twelve feet inward. In the middle of the cave was a stone alter with a folded note sitting on it. Igthorn made in up the mountain and made his way into the cave and quizzically picked up the folded piece of paper. The paper was written in my handwriting for some reason that I cannot recall and it read, "Sorry Iggy, but the time stone was a hoax. Better luck next time. Love Sunni Gummi." And ended with a smiley face that was winking its left eye and had its tongue sticking out to the right side of the paper. Igthorn was furious. He crumpled up the paper and shouted out to the horizon, "I hate you gummi bears!"

End


End file.
